Detection of smoke is a challenge in regions with clouds. The bright reflectance from clouds can make the subtler (and usually not so bright) smoke features difficult to view. This blog post briefly shows how visible imagery can be manipulated to facilitate smoke detection. The animation above shows visible imagery... Read More

Smoke from fires (unless it is extraordinarily thick) is very challenging to detect at night in infrared imagery. When there is sufficent lunar illumination, however, as occurred on 29 July 2021 over Canada (the image above shows northwestern Ontario and southern Manitoba — Lakes Winnepeg, Winnepegosis and Manitoba are apparent,... Read More

The image above shows the Level 2 GOES-R product, Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), a product created in clear skies, overlain with the GOES-16 Visible imagery from the same time. AOD measures the extinction of light via scattering and absorption by small particles in the atmosphere, and it can be used... Read More

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Split Window Difference images (above) showed widespread strong winds across the Dakotas and northern Minnesota which were responsible for producing plumes of blowing dust (darker shades of gray) — most notably from eastern North Dakota into northwestern Minnesota — on 24 May 2021.The corresponding GOES-16 Split Window Difference images with plots of... Read More