Night-time pic reveals growing economies

You can track trade by watching the density of radio traffic from the shipping lanes. This is in some ways a better indicator than the Baltic Dry Index.<p>I was trying to do what these guys did 10 years ago - but the night images data was expensive and came off a defense meteorological satellite. Found a guy at NOAA who had done the work before me and was distributing it as a lights at night study. He thought this technique of estimating GDP had issues because different regions have rules and special conditions that cause a broad difference in light levels (e.g. Denmark has particularly strict light pollutions regulations) that do not always compose at the national level.<p>I'll be interested in these guys results to see how they addressed the problems.

The lights from China were not too bright or widespread as compared to those in India. IIRC, China's GDP is about thrice that of India's.<p>It wasn't clear (to me; correct me if I'm wrong) from the article whether this looks at the <i>spread</i> of lighting across the country. Seems to reflect that fairly accurately on a continent-level, though.

The classic, absolutely terrifying example from the Korean peninsula:<p><a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark....</a><p>I have never seen an image which is so effective at showing the disparity between countries.

Paper:<p><a href="http://www.econ.brown.edu/students/adam_storeygard/HSWLightsr072109.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.econ.brown.edu/students/adam_storeygard/HSWLights...</a>

I was fascinated to see the bright streak of light tracking the Nile.

To paraphrase, <i>The lights are turning on all over the world.</i> :D