Earth Day 2023
April 22, 2023: Happy Earth Day! The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. The idea was conceived by then Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and an estimated 20 million Americans participated on that first day, which was approximately 10% of the US population back then. You can read more about the first Earth Day celebration on the Nelson Institute’s web page: Tracing Earth Day’s Origins.
Earth Day is a great excuse for us to show off some true color imagery from GOES! In case anyone forgot, you live on a beautiful planet! Do what you can to help keep it that way. Here’s a selfie of almost everyone in North and South America today at 17:00 UTC from GOES-16 (GOES-East) ABI:
If you weren’t in that view, maybe you’re in this next one from GOES-18 (GOES-West) today at 21:00 UTC?
I am attempting to get everyone in this next image. Unless you were off planet or in the Arctic or Antarctic Circle, you must be somewhere in this next image. A true color, local-noon composite from five geostationary imagers, thanks to the SSEC Satellite Data Services (SDS), here you are:
Back in 2020, @GOESguy on Twitter shared this loop, starting with the first Earth Day in 1970 and every 10 years to 2020:
The animation with some controls is on this web page. Or for the mp4, click here.
Or just for the Tweet on the first Earth Day in 1970, as seen by ATS III, here’s another @GOESguy tweet from 2022. Earth Day was started by a Wisconsinite (Nelson) and so was geostationary satellite meteorology (Vern Suomi). We continue to follow in these giant’s footsteps at both the Nelson Institute and SSEC.