Overlapping 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sectors provided GOES-16 (GOES-East) images at 30-second intervals from all 16 of the ABI spectral bands (above), which displayed the northeast-moving warm thermal signature of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster as the Crew-6 Mission was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 0534 UTC (12:34 AM EST) on 02 March 2023. The low-altitude rocket launch condensation cloud was also evident in imagery from the Infrared bands (07-16), drifting slowly eastward away from the launch site. One or both of these rocket launch signatures were detected by all 16 of the ABI spectral bands, as well as Plume RGB images — although the nighttime reflectance values in Visible bands 01 and 02 were quite small (cursor sample), and difficult to discern using the default Visible enhancement (unless one zoomed in for a much closer view).

GOES-16 images from ABI spectral bands 07-09 along with the Night Plume RGB (below) later displayed a thermal signature of the Falcon 9 Stage 1 entry burn at 0541 UTC well off the coast of South Carolina, which slowed its rate of descent back toward the surface (for a recovery landing on an offshore drone ship).

For this Stage 1 entry burn, close-up 16-panel images from each of the 16 ABI spectral bands (below) showed that reflectance and/or thermal signatures were detected by nearly all of the bands (except 13, 14 and 15) — including subtle nighttime reflectance values in Visible bands 01 and 02, as seen in cursor sampling of all 16 bands.

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A mid-level atmospheric wave with subtle warm-air advection forced some strong thunderstorms in central Texas this morning. The operational high-resolution convection-allowing NWP models did not handle these storms well at all.

ProbSevere LightningCast, an image-based AI model, picked up on the rapidly growing convection about 15-20 minutes before lightning initiation. LightningCast predicts the probability of lightning in the next 60 minutes at any location using GOES-R ABI reflectance and brightness temperature data.

ProbSevere v3 uses machine-learning models to predict next-hour probabilities of severe weather (large hail, damaging wind gusts, tornadoes), by incorporating storm-object tracking and extracting features from radar, satellite, lightning, and short-term NWP data. The animation below shows how the probabilities of any severe weather evolved for these storms as they approached the Dallas-Fort-Worth metro region. Hail up to 1.5″ in diameter was reported.

At 12:44 UTC, ProbSevere v3 (PSv3) probability of severe was 53%, vs. 23% for the operational ProbSevere v2 (PSv2), as seen in Figure 3. A post-mortem analysis revealed that, compared to PSv2, the PSv3 model was able to combine the sub-severe MESH (maximum expected size of hail), ENI flash lightning density, and moderate mid-level azimuthal shear in an environment with high effective shear (> 50 kt) to produce a stronger (and more accurate) probability of severe. PSv3 exceeded 50% four minutes before PSv2, and exceeded 40% eight minutes before PSv2 (see Figure 4). Having more accurate and timely probabilistic guidance prior to reported severe weather is critical in helping the NWS issue more accurate and timely severe weather warnings.

Both ProbSevere v3 and LightningCast will be evaluated by NWS forecasters at the 2023 Hazardous Weather Testbed, held in May and June in Norman, OK.

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JMA Himawari-9 Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images of Tropical Cyclone Judy in the South Pacific Ocean on 27 February 2023 (above) displayed some unusually cold cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures — with isolated vales of -100ºC and colder (red pixels embedded within interior darker black regions).

The Central Cold Cover feature was displaced to the NNW of the low-level storm center — and Judy was moving through an environment of low deep-layer wind shear (below).

===== 28 February Update =====

On the following day, 2.5-minute interval rapid scan Himawari-9 Infrared images (above) showed Judy as the storm was rapidly intensifying during its southward trek across the Vanuatu island chain. A ragged eye structure was intermittently observed.

A GMI Microwave (85 GHz) image at 1717 UTC (below) revealed that the eye of Judy was passing over the island of Epi, Vanuatu at that time.

===== 01 March Update =====

Judy then further intensified to a Category 3 storm at 0900 UTC on 01 March (SATCON) — however, not long after that time, 2.5-minute rapid scan JMA Himawari-9 Infrared images (above) showed that the ragged eye became obscured by high clouds from surrounding deep convection.

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What products are available in the Arctic in between SAR observations? Consider the composite image above, showing RADARSAT-2 SAR ice concentration at 0453 UTC on 22 February 2023 over/around Saint Matthew Island (direct link to footprint here at the STAR SAR Wind site*) and an RADARSAT Constellation Mission-3 (RCM3) image at at 0546 UTC on 22 February 2023 south of Russia (direct link to footprint here at the STAR SAR Wind site*). The background image is Level 2 AMSR-2 imagery with high spatial resolution: around 3-km pixel size!

The SAR orbits for 22 February that are shown below. There is a cluster of orbits over this part of the Gulf of Alaska from 0442 – 0546 UTC, but then few observations until after 1800 UTC. One could rely on Geostationary data to fill in that gap — but the Sun does not rise over this part of the Gulf of Alaska on 22 February until after 1800 UTC. This is when microwave data can be useful.

This image of GCOM-W orbits on 22 February 2023 (from this website) show a GCOM-W overpass over the Gulf of Alaska near 1430 UTC. GCOM-W AMSR-2 Ice Concentration product from that overpass are available at NASA Worldview (direct link) , as shown below. If this image information is included in the SAR image above (it is!), then ice forecasters can view ice edge information — albeit at resolutions that are grosser than SAR data provides. This Level 2 AMSR-2 imagery has 3-km resolution. This microwave resolution allows forecasters to track the sea ice edge in between SAR overpasses.

How do forecasters view this blending of information with different horizontal scales? Mike Lawson from the Sea Ice had this comment on the imagery at the top (and it also explains the colored arrows!)

.... In my opinion this is the best case scenario to use this imagery in there is a cloudy gap between SAR images. The red and yellow arrows are features that can clearly be tracked based on our previous analysis (yellow lines). The blue arrows highlight the boundary of the pack ice vs. marginal ice, which I think AMSR handles quite well in most cases.
Another situation I didn't get a good screenshot example of happened during this event. You can grab both the morning and evening images for the day then use them to estimate how fast the ice edge is advancing/retreating. In this case, it looks to be around 8 nm between images or an avg of 16nm of retreat per day. These estimates can really help us get a handle on what to forecast for certain wind regimes or what estimate to give customers when they call and ask for an update.

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Thanks to Mike for sending along these images to Tom Greenwald, SSEC/CIMSS. Thanks also to NSIDC.

*Note: The retrieved winds at those links are invalid over ice, but the patterns in the retrieved winds will show where the ice sits.

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