Update on GOES-13
Special update: GOES-13 is scheduled to become the operational GOES-East on June 6, 2013 at approximately 1545 UTC. Link.
Special update #2:GOES-13 will become the operational GOES-East Satellite no sooner than Monday 10 June 2013 Link.
GOES-13 will become operational GOES-East at approximately 1545 UTC on Monday June 10. Link.
(Update on the GOES-13 Sounder can be found at the bottom of the blog post)
GOES-13 Imager Channels from 1445 UTC on 3 June 2013 (click image to play animation)
GOES-13 suffered an anomaly in May, and GOES-14 has been standing in for GOES-13 since May 23rd. (Click here to read about a possible cause of the anomaly) Testing of GOES-13 has shown that the Imager continues to send quality imagery, as shown in the animation of Full-Disk imagery above.
GOES-13 and GOES-14 6.5 µm Sounder Channels from 1346 UTC on 31 May 2013
The Sounder, at present, is being outgassed (and there is therefore no current Sounder data; the sounder is off during outgassing); it is possible that after outgassing, the GOES-13 imagery will be as clean as GOES-14. Imagery before outgassing showed significant differences in noise levels between the two instruments. An outgas was also performed last year to reduce noise in the sounder observations (that outgas was of shorter duration).
GOES-14 10.7 µm Imager showing change in CONUS sector footprint
GOES-14 remains the operational GOES-East image until further notice. The CONUS sector has been expanded to the east to include Puerto Rico in more operational scans. Imagery above shows the coverage before and after the eastward expansion of the CONUS sector.
NOAA/NESDIS continues distributing updates on the GOES satellites. Announcements can also be found here.
Update: June 6 2013:
GOES-13 4.4 µm Sounder from before (top) and after (bottom) outgassing. Standard deviation of imagery as shown
An outgas was performed to “clean” the sounder instrument, and it was successful. Above are images from Sounder band 15 (4.4 µm) before (top) and after (bottom) the outgas. Note that the standard deviation of the image has dropped. The Noise Index in the figure below (from this website) also shows a dramatic change for the better after the outgas. (Image below courtesy of Fangfang Yu, NOAA/NESDIS).
Noise Index from GOES-13 4.4 µm Sounder channel from various timeframes