Japanese Meteorological Agency Himawari-8 Water Vapor (6.9 µm, 2-km resolution) images (above) showed the rapid intensification of a hurricane-force extratropical cyclone over the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea during the 12 December – 13 December 2015 period. The 6.9 µm is one of 3 water vapor spectral bands on the Himawari... Read More

Now that Himawari-8 is their operational geostationary satellite, the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) decommissioned MTSAT-1R (which was relaying the direct broadcast of MTSAT-2 imagery) as of 0630 UTC on 04 December 2015. A comparison of the final 5 hours of available MTSAT-2 6.75 µm water vapor channel images with the... Read More

Tropical Depression In-fa (27W) formed well south of the Marshall Islands in the West Pacific Ocean on 17 November 2015, and proceeded to track northwestward to a position south of Guam on 20 November (above). Following a brief decrease in intensity on 18 September, In-fa began another period of intensification... Read More

The Mount Rinjani volcano in Indonesia began a period of eruptions on 25 October 2015; the ash plume became very apparent on Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) images from RealEarth on 03 and 04 October (above). The volcanic ash disrupted flights at Denpasar Airport in Bali (the red dot at... Read More