The Suomi NPP satellite experienced an anomaly at ~1630 UTC on 26 July that caused all instruments to go into ‘safe mode’. NOAA Engineers have successfully re-started the instruments. The Direct Broadcast signal resumed on 11 August, and NOAA/NESDIS proclaimed VIIRS Sensor Data Record (SDR) data operational as of 18 August (information on this outage is available here). The above Day Night Band image, from RealEarth, shows Suomi NPP data from the San Juan Direct Broadcast site. The tropical Atlantic remains quiet.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB and Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (above) showed an arc of blowing dust (along with multiple wildfire smoke plumes) moving northward across northern Argentina — behind a cold front — on 15 August 2022.

Embedded within the broad arc of blowing dust were dense plumes originating from salt flats along the northern edge of Mar Chiquita Lagoon — a closer view of those plumes is shown below.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (below) include plots of hourly surface reports — and as the cold front moved northward, surface report data (SACO | SANT | SARC | SARF | SASA | SASJ) revealed southerly wind gusts as high as 34 knots and visibility restrictions as low as 3 miles (due to blowing dust) along/behind the front.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-18 (GOES-West) True Color RGB images viewed using CSPP GeoSphere (above) showed the motion of sea ice filaments that had moved southward through the Bering Strait and into the northwestern Bering Sea (just off the coast of Chokotka Okrug, Russia) on 14 August 2022. 

A sequence of 375-meter resolution VIIRS False Color RGB images from NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP viewed using RealEarth (below) displayed a more detailed view of the sea ice (brighter shades of cyan).

A 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 False Color RGB image (below) provided an even more detailed depiction of the sea ice structure and coverage.

H/T to Rick Thoman (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), who pointed out that this sea ice was evident in the Bering Sea on 09 August. More information on this unusual sea ice event is available on this NWS SeaIce Program storymap.

https://twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1557185745265524737

===== 21 August Update =====

One week later, another sequence of VIIRS False Color RGB images from Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 on 21 August (above) indicated that the sea ice had moved a bit farther to the southwest along the Chukotka coast, with much of it located within Mechigmenskiy Zaliv due south of Lorino. 

GOES-18 True Color RGB images (below) showed the motion of this sea ice during the day.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) covered the daytime period from 1130-2250 UTC on 08 August, 09 August and 10 August 2022 — and displayed the hazy signature of Saaran Air Layer (SAL) dust as it approached the Southeast US coast (Florida, Georgia and South Carolina in particular). This hazy dust signature was more pronounced early and late in the day, when the forward scattering of light was more pronounced (due to a lower usun angle).

The GOES-16 Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) derived product (below) provided a quantitative measure of the density of this dust — with AOD values generally ranging from 0.5 to 0.8. Note the westward-moving semicircular region where no AOD appears every day: these are areas where the product is not created, due to contamination by sun glint off the water.

GOES-16 Split Window Difference SAL product images (source) covering the 8-day period from 03-10 August (below) showed the westward transport of this SAL dust across the Atlantic Ocean.

Some of this airborne SAL dust subsided into the boundary layer, occasionally reducing the surface visibility to 5-7 miles at a few sites near and along the coast in Florida (KSGJ, KJAX, KFHB, K42J), Georgia (KSSI, KJES) and South Carolina (KJZI, KARW).

View only this post Read Less