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Southern Hemisphere summer solstice sunlight

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) Full Disk images [click to play animation]

The Southern Hemisphere Summer Solstice (and the Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice) occurred at 1628 UTC on 21 December 2017. A 24-hour animation of GOES-16 Full Disk “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images ending just after the Solstice time (above) showed that the far southern latitudes remained illuminated during the entire time.

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play MP4 animation]

Close-up views of the far Southern Hemisphere portion of the GOES-16 Full Disk are shown using “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm) images (below). The most prominent feature was the cloud shield of a 960 hPa storm system (surface analysis) moving west of the Antarctic Peninsula and over the Bellingshausen Sea — on the Snow/Ice images, clouds composed of ice crystals appear as darker shades of gray. At the end of each animation, land-fast sea ice can be seen extending northward from the Antarctic coast in the lower left portion of the images (ice appears bright white on the Visible imagery, and dark gray on the Snow/Ice imagery). In the lower center portion of the images, bright sun glint off ice-free water is apparent on 21 December at 0445 and 0500 UTC.

GOES-16 Near-Infrared

GOES-16 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images [click to play MP4 animation]

Categories: Antarctic, GOES-16