GOES-17 (GOES-West) Upper-level Water Vapor (6.2 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Air Mass RGB images (above) displayed the signature of dry, ozone-rich air associated with a Potential Vorticity (PV) anomaly approaching Baja California and Southern California on 05 November 2019. The “dynamic tropopause” — taken to be the pressure of the PV1.5 surface —... Read More
Gridded NUCAPS fields (Here’s a NASA SpoRT VLab page on the product) are now available in AWIPS, effective with AWIPS Build 19.3.1. The imagery above includes a swath of NUCAPS points (called up via ‘NUCAPS Sounding Availability’) under the Satellite Tab, and the ‘S-NPP and NOAA-20’ choice there (even though, at present,... Read More
NOAA-Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) vertical profiles provide useful information derived from data from CrIS and ATMS instruments on board both Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20. Infrared Sounder information from CrIS gives profiles in clear/partly cloud regions, and ATMS supplies information in regions that are uniformly cloudy. (Click here for more... Read More
The animation above shows the 1721 UTC GOES-16 Visible (0.64 µm) image along with NUCAPS profile locations from a NOAA-20 overpass. Convection is approaching from the west, from central Wisconsin. NUCAPS soundings can give a good estimate for how far south that convective line might develop, and a north-south series... Read More
