10-minute Full Disk sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Day Land Cloud Fire RGB, Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) + Fire Power derived product (a component of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA) images (above) showed signatures of multiple wildfires across northeastern British Columbia, two of which produced  pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds — having cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -40ºC and colder, denoted by shades of blue in the 10.3 µm images — late in the day on 13 May 2024 (these were Canada’s first pyroCb clouds of their 2024 wildfire season, which has gotten off to an unusually early start). Wildfire smoke drifting eastward was intermittently reducing the surface visibility at High Level, Alberta (CYOJ).

The largest of these fires burned very hot, exhibiting 3.9 µm shortwave infrared brightness temperatures of 137.88ºC (the saturation temperature of GOES-18 ABI Band 7 detectors) — with Fire Power values intermittently exceeding 6200 MW (below).

GOES-18 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) displayed the dense plumes of wildfire smoke, with pyroCb clouds produced by the larger, more intense wildfires rising above the tops of the smoke (casting shadows onto the smoke layer below).

View only this post Read Less

Thousands if not millions of people took colorful photos of the Northern Lights during the early hours of May 11th during a remarkable G5 geomagnetic storm that expanded Aurora Borealis activity southward to unusually low latitudes in the United States.

The JPSS fleet of polar-orbiting spacecraft captured eight monochromatic VIIRS Day Night Band images over North America documenting the historic space weather event from a satellite perspective, archived here for posterity and future research. (click on each individual image to see the full resolution version)

NOAA-20 Day Night Band Images

Suomi-NPP Day Night Band Images

NOAA-21 Day Night Band Images

View only this post Read Less

The long-anticipated arrival of NOAA-21 NUCAPS profiles (to supplement NOAA-20!) to AWIPS means that data void regions such as the South Pacific Ocean now have complete twice-daily coverage, as shown by the inidividual profiles above, and the overlapping profiles below. This means that a twice-daily mappings of accurate satellite sounder-provided thermodynamic variables are available! The K-Index fields shown here are highlighted because of their known relationship to the Galvex-Davison Index. Thus, the basin-wide fields can be compared to model output to assess where the model is or is not in accord with reality.

The stepped animation below shows the GDI forecast bracketing the observations of K-Index shown above, from the GFS initialized at 1800 UTC 12 May 2024. (Source).

GOES-18 imagery compares favorable to the K-Index fields, as shown in the true-color imagery below (taken from the CSPP Geosphere site).

NUCAPS profiles are also available from MetopC, and that satellite gives excellent (but not complete) coverage about three hours before the NOAA-20/NOAA-21 overpasses. MetopC estimates of K-Index are shown below, for two passes spanning 2006 to 2153 UTC on 12 May 2024.

View only this post Read Less

VIIRS data downloaded from the CIMSS Direct Broadcast antenna (the link is evanescent) is used to create imagery that shows poor air quality over North America. The toggle above compares Aerosol Optical Depth and True-Color imagery derived using CSPP software. Two main smoke plumes are apparent, one stretching from northern Canada south and eastward to the Great Lakes, and a second over the southern Gulf of Mexico/Yucatan Peninsula.

Very large full-resolution images from the CIMSS Direct Broadcast site are available for true-color and AOD imagery. (Click the links)

---

A GOES view of some of this smoke is available here.

View only this post Read Less