VIIRS Day/Night Band Power Outage Analysis for the February 6, 2023 Earthquake in Turkey and Syria

by Tilottama Ghosh, Christopher Elvidge, Mikhail Zhizhin

On February 6, 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 20 km, and at a distance of 30 km WNW of Gaziantep province in Turkey (https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=1218444). At least 120 aftershocks have been felt around the region, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). At least 41,000 people have lost their lives till date (February 15*, 2023) and the number continues to rise. The natural disaster has aggravated the preexisting humanitarian need in the region as many Syrian refugees are concentrated in the 10 affected provinces of southern Turkey, and Syria, and have been already suffering from over a decade of civil war.
The earthquake was caused by the Arabian plate moving northwards and grinding against the Anatolian plate (https://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/271/M7-8-CENTRAL-TURKEY-on-February-6th-2023-at-01-17-UTC). The movement of these two plates along the transform fault boundary caused the severe earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
In the attached images the fault lines are shown in cyan, and the earthquake epicenter is shown as a point in light green.
The images are red, green blue color composites:
Red = JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB January 2022, monthly cloud-free composite
Green = JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB visible band
Blue = JPSS NPP VIIRS M15 thermal band – inverted so cold clouds and cold terrain are bright blue.
The first image shows a typical day prior to the earthquake, with lit areas shown in yellow. The pages to follow show results from individual nights following the earthquake with power outage in red, normal power supply in yellow, and the clouds and high elevation (cold) terrain are shown in blue. Lights obscured by clouds are magenta. It is interesting to note that the areas of power outage follow the fault line. The progression of images show that in some areas power supplies are returning.

Pakistan’s power outage on January 23, 2023

by Tilottama Ghosh, Christopher Elvidge

The image is a red, green blue color composite with:
Red = JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB January 2022 monthly cloud-free composite
Green = JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB visible band
Blue = JPSS NPP VIIRS M15 thermal band – inverted so cold clouds and terrain are bright blue

The areas of power outage are shown in red, normal power supply in yellow, and the clouds and high elevation (cold) terrain are shown in blue. Light obscured by clouds are magenta.

Millions of people in Pakistan were reported to be without electric power on during the day on Monday, January 23, 2023 when electricity was turned off Sunday night to conserve energy. The next morning, technicians were unable to restart the system in the dawn hours and the power remained off during much of the day on January 23 (https://apnews.com/article/disaster-planning-and-response-karachi-pakistan-islamabad-business-2dc7d442d662f462de146111d02c49e2?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_05). Many major cities, including the capital of Islamabad, and many of the small villages and towns across Pakistan were reported to be without electricity for more than twelve hours. Officials announced that power was restored in many cities after a blackout of about 15 hours. Due to the lack of proper maintenance and failure of the government to invest in new infrastructure, Pakistan’s power distribution infrastructure is in poor shape and has become susceptible to frequent blackouts (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/world/asia/pakistan-power-outage-blackouts.html)

Despite the reporting of power outages, the satellite analysis indicates that most areas of lighting remained lit, perhaps due to the use of local backup generators. The VIIRS data were collected after midnight on January 23, 2023.  Several patches of lighting outage were detected based on a red color in the color composite.  Some of the outage areas are indicated with lines on the color composite image.

Power Outage in Florida caused by Hurricane Ian

Florida Power Outage

by Tilottama Ghosh

Red Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB February 2022 monthly cloud free composite

Green Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB visible band

Blue Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB inverted M15 thermal band

The areas of power outage are shown in red, normal power supply in yellow, and the clouds and terrain are shown in blue.

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on the southwest coast in the island of Cayo Costa near Fort Myers and Cape Coral on September 28th at about 3:15 pm local time as a Category 4 Hurricane. It caused immense damage to life and property. On September 30th, 1.8 million people were still without power (https://www.axios.com/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida-power-outage). The RGB (Red-Green-Blue) image on the right shows the power outage in red as of September 30th. The path of Hurricane Ian has been retraced from the ‘Zoom Earth’ Image of NOAA/NESDIS/STAR (https://zoom.earth/storms/ian-2022/). The RGB image of on the right is of August 18th and shows the power supply during normal times.

October 5, 2022

Power Outage in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Fiona

Puerto Rico power outage

by Tilottama Ghosh

Red Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB February 2022 monthly cloud free composite

Green Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB visible band

Blue Band: JPSS NPP VIIRS DNB inverted M15 thermal band

The areas of power outage are shown in red, normal power supply in yellow, and the clouds and terrain are shown in blue.

On September 15th, power supply was ‘normal’ in Puerto Rico. Increasing cloud cover was seen September 16th onwards, till Hurricane Fiona made landfall on September 18th. The cloud cover remained heavy till September 21st making it difficult to get a ‘clear’ view of the power outage. The September 22nd RGB image shows the power outage in red. This is confirmed by the Reuters report that 1.1. million homes are still without power in Puerto Rico (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/one-million-still-without-power-puerto-rico-after-fiona-2022-09-22/)

September 26, 2022