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Record warmth in Alaska and Canada

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-17

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly surface temperatures plotted in cyan [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed that it was generally cloud-free across much of eastern Alaska and northwestern Canada on 19 March 2019 — the abundant solar insolation help to warm surface temperatures to record levels for the month of March at locations such as Sitka (high=67ºF) and Yakutat (high=60ºF) along the Alaska Panhandle, and at Yohin Lake (high=71ºF) in the Canadian Northwest Territories. The 70ºF at Klawock was the earliest occurrence of 70ºF on record for the state of Alaska, and the 71ºF at Yohin Lake was the earliest 70ºF on record for the Northwest Territores. In the eastern Interior of Alaska, daily temperature records for 19 March were set at Eagle (high=55ºF) and Northway (high=50ºF).

GOES-17 Air Mass RGB images from the AOS site (below) helped to highlight the anomalous mid-tropospheric ridge and warm lower-tropospheric temperatures over western North America — note the northwestward surge of green hues that are more characteristic of warm subtropical air masses south of the polar jet stream over the central Pacific Ocean. Note that GOES-17 was conducting a test of the Mode 6 scan schedule, so Full Disk images were available every 10 minutes.

GOES-17 Air Mass RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Air Mass RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]



Categories: GOES-17, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images