The first tropical storm of the season in the eastern Atlantic (Ana, Bill and Claudette all formed over the western Atlantic) has formed from a cluster of thunderstorms that emerged from Africa. The multi-day animation, above, from GOES-13, shows the steady progress of the disorganized system across the eastern Atlantic... Read More
A comparison of 4-km resolution GOES-15 (GOES-West), GOES-14, and GOES-13 (GOES-East) 3.9 µm shortwave infrared images (above; click to play MP4 animation; also available as a 9.4 Mbyte animated GIF) showed the development and evolution of the “hot spot” (dark black to yellow to red color enhancement) associated with a small... Read More
GOES-13 visible (0.63 µm) images (above; click to play animation) displayed distinct dark-gray ash plumes from 2 separate daytime eruptions of the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador on 14 August 2015 (there was also an initial eruption that occurred during the preceding nighttime hours). The asterisk near the center of the images... Read More
A storage facility in Tianjin, China exploded shortly after 1500 UTC on 12 August 2015 (media story). Himawari-8, MTSAT-2 and COMS-1 all viewed the explosion that generated a strong thermal signature in the shortwave infrared band (3.75 µm – 3.9 µm). The animation above shows the benefit of Himawari-8’s speedier scanning... Read More
