An ABI hot (bright) spot is not a fire when it’s a fleet of solar farms. For example, recall the CIMSS Satellite Blog entry regarding solar farms in California. Note how some reflections are so bright that the ABI reports dark surrounding pixels. This is part of the remapping process from detector to pixel... Read More
The NOAA Storm Prediction Center’s Convective Outlook (graphic) from 1630 UTC 23 May 2020 shows an enhanced risk of Severe Thunderstorms in northern Illinois with a sharp cutoff in probabilities to the north in southern Wisconsin. The imagery above shows the GOES-16 ABI Band 2 (0.64 µm) visible imagery (click... Read More
The satellites Terra (launched in 1999) and Aqua (launched in 2002) both carry the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, an imager with 26 channels at wavelengths that range from 0.41 µm to 14.1 µm. There are simple ways to create useful imagery with this historical data with Polar2Grid software that... Read More
Consider the rocking animation (if you click on it) of 1-minute visible imagery, above, showing the high plains of West Texas from 1900-2030 UTC on 7 May 2020. A dryline is present; can you predict from this imagery where convection will initiate? (Will it? Spoiler alert: Yes, and Yes!)The Split... Read More
