Mount Tongariro in New Zealand (on the North Island) erupted on Monday, August 6th, for the first time in a century. A Suomi-NPP overpass at 12:52 UTC, approximately one hour after the eruption, allowed the day-night band to capture an image of the volcanic plume as it moved eastward across... Read More

The Visible-Infraread Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on Suomi/NPP samples longwave radiation emitted at 11.45 µm and shortwave radiation emitted at 3.74 µm. Because liquid water clouds have different emissivity properties at those two wavelengths, the difference in brightness temperature can be used to determine the presence of clouds (such... Read More

The Day-Night Band from VIIRS on the Suomi/NPP has been giving excellent imagery of Tropical Storms Ernesto and Florence over the weekend. The views are especially crisp because of the near fullness of the moon. For example, the sheared nature of Ernesto (top) is evident, and the overshooting tops in... Read More

 A comparison of AWIPS images of 1-km resolution MODIS 0.65 µm visible channel data and the corresponding MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) product (above) showed nearly cloud-free conditions and very hot LST values of 120 – 140 F (darker red color enhancement) across much of southern Oklahoma at 19:48 UTC... Read More