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Cape Newenham, Alaska bow shock waves

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-15 Visible (0.63 µm) images, with hourly plots of wind barbs [click to play animation]

GOES-15 Visible (0.63 µm) images, with hourly plots of wind barbs [click to play animation]

GOES-15 (GOES-West) Visible (0.63 µm) images (above) showed patches of fog and low stratus moving southwestward off Southwest Alaska and across the adjacent offshore waters of the Bering Sea on 10 June 2018.

A closer look using 250-meter resolution Terra/Aqua MODIS and 375-meter resolution Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from RealEarth (below) revealed a packet of “bow shock waves” created as the shallow fog/stratus interacted with the relatively rugged terrain of the narrow Cape Newenham land feature (Google Maps). Other examples of similar bow shock wave cloud features have been documented here, here and here.

Terra MODIS, Aqua MODIS and Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color RGB images [click to enlarge]

Terra MODIS, Aqua MODIS and Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color RGB images [click to enlarge]

A 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 false-color RGB image (below) provided a more detailed view of the bow shock wave structure. Snow cover (cyan) could be seen on some of the higher-elevation land features.

Landsat-8 false-color RGB image [click to enlarge]

Landsat-8 false-color RGB image [click to enlarge]

A time series plot of Cape Newenham surface observations (below) showed the fluctuations in visibility as northerly winds brought patches of fog over the site.

Time series plot of Cape Newenham surface observations [click to enlarge]

Time series plot of Cape Newenham surface observations [click to enlarge]

Categories: Aqua, Arctic, GOES-15, Landsat, MODIS, RealEarth, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, Terra, VIIRS