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).

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (above) showed patches of remnant thick first-year ice in southern Hudson Bay, Canada (off the coast of Ontario) on 07 August 2022. The diurnal tide cycle within Hudson Bay was evident in the ice motion during the period 1230-2020 UTC.

Farther to the north, a similar tidal ebb and flow of ice within the Northwest Passages was also seen in a longer animation from 1200-2150 UTC (below).

A map of Ice Concentration Departure From Normal from the Canadian Ice Service (below) indicated that a significant portion of the ice concentration in southern Hudson Bay was above normal for the date (darker shades of blue) — while most ice in the Northwest Passages was closer to normal concentration.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector (from 0600-0800 UTC) and 5-minute CONUS Sector (from 0801-1301 UTC) GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) showed clusters of thunderstorms that developed and moved eastward across parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa on 07 August 2022. In fact, these storms contributed to a new 24-hour rainfall record (5.44 inches) being set at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Much of this record rainfall occurred during the 0600-1300 UTC period shown by the GOES-16 imagery.

Shortly after flash flooding had been reported in Sioux Falls, a toggle between NOAA-20 VIIRS Infrared (11.45 µm) and GOES-16 ABI “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images valid at 0826 UTC (below) revealed that the coldest NOAA-20 cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures near Sioux Falls at that time were -83ºC, compared to -74ºC with GOES-16 (identical color enhancements were applied to both images). The northwestward shift in GOES-16 image cloud-top features was associated with parallax (which in this case was a distance of 22 km for a cloud-top height of 50,000 feet).

The MIMIC Total Precipitable Water product at 0300, 0600, 0900 and 1200 UTC — visualized using RealEarth — is shown below. TPW values near Sioux Falls peaked at 57 mm (or 2.24 inches) at 0900 UTC.

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The CSPP Geosphere website has recently been upgraded. CSPP Geosphere uses data from the GOES Re-Broadcast (GRB) data stream Those data are processed on an on-site Kubernetes cluster that produces full-resolution GOES-East/GOES-West images that are quickly and fluidly zoomable and pannable. In addition, recent software and hardware upgrades mean that processing is faster. GOES-West data (either GOES-17 or GOES-18 during interleave periods such as the one occurring from early August until 6 September 2022) are now available. The default imagery shown remains Nighttime Microphysics RGB at night, as shown above, and sharpened, Rayleigh-corrected True-Color imagery during the day (as shown in the image below).

CSPP Geosphere allows users to save off mp4 videos of animations as shown above (with the default number of frames, 12, although any number of frames can be displayed in an animation), and also individual png frames, as shown below. The mp4 animations and individual png frames are created on the client machine; creation speed will depend on a user’s computer’s resources and resolution. In addition, the site now includes a default lat/lon readout that tracks the cursor, and a searchbox that will allow a user to center the image near a location at near-maximum zoom (‘Manhattan’, for example, as shown below — after zooming out one step). Latitude/Longitude and Coastlines/Borders can be turned on and off.

The example below shows 48 frames of GOES-18 data over the northern Pacific Ocean (link; CSPP Geosphere lets users easily share the url used to create the imagery). Note the abundant smoke over the central USA at the end of the animation, and the sun glint over Asia at the start. Barcode noise (also here) in Band 7 (a component of the Nighttime Microphysics RGB) is apparent, but faint.

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GOES-16 Imagery, below (from this CSPPGeosphere link) shows the turbid waters of the Amazon flowing northward into the tropical Atlantic.

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The GeoSphere website and back end were created using SSEC-internal funds. The CSPPGeo GOES Re-Broadcast (GRB) processing software and CSPPGeo Geo2Grid software used in the back end were created with funding from NOAA.

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