GOES-R Satellite Launched

On 19 Noveber 2016, the GOES-R satellite was successfully launched. This new NOAA satellite is set to make a big impact on weather forecasting over the next decade.

Watch the Launch below

More info can be found here

Mark your calendar!! GOES-R Launches this Saturday

The GOES-R satellite is scheduled to launch 19 November 2016 at 3:40 Mountain Time. This satellite is an advancement in modern weather observation systems and will aid in weather forecasting and monitoring.

Elevated Ozone Near Antelope Island Fire Observed by KSL Helicopter

Antelope Island Fire seen by NASA Aqua Satellite on 23 July 2016

The KSL-5 News Helicopter is equipped with an Ozone and PM 2.5 sensor on July 23, 2016 the helicopter flew to a fire on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. When the copter flew in the smoke the PM 2.5 and ozone concentrations increased.

Current NASA Earth Science Satellite Missions

From the TEMP talks http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/tempo/agenda.html

Satellite Upgrade: GOES-R --> GOES-16

From an email about the GOES-R satellite preparing for launch this fall...
The links are broken, but you can copy and paste the URL in a new tab or look at archived looped here: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_of_the_day/

Hi MAP,

I'm sure many of you are already aware of the details of NOAA's new geostationary satellite, GOES-R, scheduled for launch this Fall.  But in case not, read on.

GOES-R will represent the first significant upgrade in NOAA's geostationary satellite fleet since GOES-8 in the mid 90's.  It will become GOES-16 after launch, and will carry the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), in addition to some space weather instrumentation.  The ABI will have 16 spectral bands, including one visible band with a 500 m footprint at nadir, additional visible bands at 1 km resolution, and IR bands at 2 km resolution.  The satellite will be able to collect data at a much faster rate than current GOES, allowing for 15-min full disk scans, 5 min CONUS scans, and 1-min scans over two ~1000x1000 km movable mesoscale domains.  You've probably seen some of the recent GOES-14 1-min loops; this will be similar, except at 500-m resolution in the VIS instead of 1-km, a factor of four spatial resolution improvement.

GOES-16 will first be placed at 89.5 W longitude for an extended checkout period, and will be moved to either the West (135 W) or East (75 W) position approximately 1 year after launch.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) launched Himawari-8 about 1.5 years ago, and it carries an imager very similar the ABI.  The primary difference is that the ABI has a band near 1.3 micrometers for cirrus detection, while Himawari's AHI has a band in the green portion of the visible spectrum near 0.51 micrometers.  Himawari has allowed us to begin working with the best possible GOES-R proxy data and to get a feel for the amazing imagery we can expect in less than a year.  Below are links for a variety of Himawari animations, including some individual bands and some multispectral products. Big thanks to JMA for providing the data to NOAA.

Convection in northeastern Australia (10.4 micron band 13 IR, at 10-min time steps): http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=loop_of_the_day/20160124000000&number_of_images_to_display=100&loop_speed_ms=100

Storms yesterday in northern India on the extreme limb, from the visible band 3: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=loop_of_the_day/20160614000000&number_of_images_to_display=100&loop_speed_ms=250

A 930 mb low in the north Pacific from Dec. 2015 with the Geocolor product (combines daytime true color imagery with a multispectral product at night in which liquid water clouds are red and ice clouds are shades of gray): http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=loop_of_the_day/20151213000000&number_of_images_to_display=100&loop_speed_ms=100

The eruption of Mount Rinjani in Indonesia, via true color: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=dev/lindsey/loops/4nov15_rinjani_truecolor&image_width=1020&image_height=720

Wildfires and pyroCbs in southwestern Australia, via Geocolor: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop.asp?data_folder=loop_of_the_day/20160107000000&number_of_images_to_display=100&loop_speed_ms=100

A massive dust storm in western China, via true color: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=dev/lindsey/loops/27apr15_ahi_truecolor&image_width=1020&image_height=720

There are many more examples on CIRA's Himawari Loop of the Day page: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/loop_of_the_day/

I've barely touched on the plethora of new products and capabilities that GOES-R will provide.  For more details seewww.goes-r.gov or send along any questions you might have.

Sorry for the novel,

Dan

-- 

Daniel T. Lindsey, Ph.D.
Research Meteorologist
NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research
Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch - CIRA

Fort Collins, CO  80523

SpaceX lands Falcon 9 on drone ship

This is an incredible accomplishment...modern space exploration at its finest!
This technology will considerably decrease the cost of sending objects to earths orbit. what thus means for the weather community is that those millions of dollars saved can be invested in satellite technology.

ASTER is the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) launched on the Terra satellite in 1999. All the data is now available for free. Data viewers and downloaders I like are http://glovis.usgs.gov/ and http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

Here's an awesome image of Utah County from September 17, 2014.

Incredible Satellite images of Moon and Earth

Images from NASA new DSCOVR satellite. Image of Earth on July 16

You can see hurricane Dolores off the Baja peninsula. 

This is the MODIS image from that day:

Another Satellite Post: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS)

Satellites are pretty cool, and NASA keeps coming with new ideas and technologies that will help meteorologists. These satellites in particular, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), will be used to measure winds at the ocean surface and in hurricanes. How will this work? CYGNSS uses GPS signals that are constantly bouncing off the ground! This small constellation of satellites receives the GPS signals and from how distorted these signals are it can determine how fast the winds are blowing at the surface. Cool! Read more about this satellite here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/category/cygnss/?src=eoa-features

Japans new Satellite

http://nyti.ms/1KUCcqC

Check out this article about Japan's new weather observing satellite!! (several cool animations) The United States is building a new satellite similar to this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/10/science/An-Image-of-Earth-Every-Ten-Minutes.html?_r=2

Southern California Jet

Satellite Image July 10, 2015 13:15 UTC



From an email originating from Brian Tang:

This is one of the most impressive barotropic breakdowns of a vorticity strip that I've seen. Smoke from the Canadian fires is allowing us to observe this breakdown in the visible band, along with the WV band. Truly a beautiful example of geophysical turbulence and the cascade of big whirls to little whirls.

Cool Wave Clouds

With warm, stable air blowing over the mountains we get these neat waves of clouds in the lee of the mountains. Below is the MODIS image from this afternoon.

It's not often that Salt Lake is on the lee side of the mountain. The 500 mb winds show the winds blowing from the north-east.

Here's a look from the visible satellite.

And you can even pick out the wave clouds in this video...

Why do these form? Because stable air from upstream is forced over the mountain barrier. The air oscillates about it's equilibrium level, kind of like a spring, until it it is damped out.

Rest In Peace GOES-12

The GOES-12 weather satellite was decommissioned August 16th after 10 years of service (Article).  GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. Geostationary satellites stay in a fixed position above the earth as is depicted in the video below. The video shows a time lapse of 10 years of weather. 

From youtube.com