In August 2024, the European Space Agency in partnership with EUMETSAT launched a pathfinder mission called Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS), designed to prove that high-quality passive microwave observations on a micro-satellite (about the size of a washing machine!) in polar low-earth orbit are possible. AWS has one instrument on board to do this, the Microwave Radiometer (MWR), that collects observations across 19 channels, with a pixel footprint size between 10 – 40 km, depending on the channel:

Notably, AWS MWR is the first weather satellite to include channels (4 of them) around 325 GHz, which is designed to add new information about ice clouds. All together, these channels provide information that can be used to determine vertical structure of temperature and humidity in all-sky conditions.

This satellite downlinks its global, full-orbit data to a ground station in Svalbard. Since July 2025, ECMWF has been operationally assimilating AWS MWR into its forecast models with positive results. In addition, AWS has a direct broadcast capability in the L-band, allowing anyone with the right equipment to capture science data as it flies overhead. To collect this signal as the satellite passes overhead and make it useful, you need 5 things:

1. An antenna and feed capable of receiving the direct broadcast signal.
2. A demodulator configured to handle the received RF signal and turn it into a stream of packets.
3. An antenna control server that can routinely schedule reception of the satellite and capture the packets.
4. Software that can assemble, geolocate, and calibrate the raw packets to a Level 1 file.
5. Software that can read the Level 1 file and produce useful file formats for visualization.

On item 1, SSEC (along with our partners at the University of Alaska Fairbanks GINA) already operate a network of LEO direct broadcast antennas capable of L-band reception around the United States. Over the last year, we worked with the antenna vendor to develop a demodulator mode and schedule/reception configuration for AWS, covering items 2 and 3.

As of today, there two known direct broadcast antennas in the United States with all the hardware and software needed to routinely capture AWS direct broadcast – SSEC’s antenna in Madison, WI and GINA’s antenna at NOAA FCDAS in Fairbanks, AK.

In July 2025, EUMETSAT released their Level 0 / Level 1 processing package for AWS MWR. SSEC and GINA have since integrated this software into downstream processing servers, producing a real-time feed of AWS MWR Level 1 files. Then, on March 2nd, 2026, the CSPP team released Polar2Grid v3.2, which, among other things, adds the ability to read Arctic Weather Satellite MWR Level 1 files, and produce GeoTIFF and AWIPS tiled outputs. With that, all 5 items have been accomplished! For example, here’s a sample of Polar2Grid-generated images from the two systems of AWS MWR Band 19 (called AWS44 in the chart above), which is most sensitive to low level ice clouds and snow:

Work has yet to be done by various groups on developing useful colormaps to make these MWR Level 1 bands helpful for forecasters, and on the integration of AWS MWR into NOAA’s operational Level 2 microwave products (like MiRS). EUMETSAT plans on launching additional micro-satellites (up 6 operational satellites at a time, spread across 3 orbital planes), nearly identical to AWS, starting in 2029, creating a constellation called Sterna. Sterna satellites, along with the traditional NOAA JPSS and EUMETSAT MetOp constellations, would provide rapid-revisit passive microwave soundings across the whole globe to improve weather forecast accuracy.

More information about EUMETSAT’s future Sterna constellation can be found at: https://www.eumetsat.int/eps-sterna

Looking ahead, SSEC hopes to purchase the hardware needed to support AWS and other upcoming DB missions at its other 5 antenna sites. GINA is providing Alaska AWS DB data to NOAA/NESDIS for experimental inclusion in an improved Level 2 Snowfall Rate product. Work on this initial AWS direct broadcast development was partially supported by SSEC’s Polar Satellite Antenna Systems contract with the National Weather Service Office of Observations.

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The morning of 5 March 2026 saw widespread fog over the Midwestern United States. The following animation shows the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB product from GOES-19 with some surface observations overlaid on top. The surface observations show just how widespread the fog was. The standard meteorological chart code uses two horizontal parallel lines to denote mist and three such lines for fog. The visibility at a station (in miles) is shown by the number in the lower-right of each plot. In northwestern Illinois, for example, visibilities were between 2 and 3 miles, while in Chicago it was 1.5 miles and in Milwaukee it was as low as a quarter of a mile. Many of the lcoations across the map are also showing conditions at or very close to saturation, with numerous places have dew points at the same value as the temperature or just a degree or two apart.

The day cloud phase distinction product does well in discriminating between liquid (cyan) and ice (orange-yellow) clouds. A similar product, the Day Snow/Fog RGB, is another tool for identifying low clouds and fog from satellite. Here, teh frozen surface areas (lake ice or snow) show up as red with the flog as various shades of gray or yellow-gray.

An additional data source worth monitoring are the aircraft profiles. Many commercial aircraft provide observations of temperature and winds as they take off and land, while a small subset also provide water vapor. This smaller selection of temperature + water vapor observations (less than 10% of the total) is publicly available in real time, although there’s not a lot of places to easily access the data. Fortunately, a weather enthusiast has made a page to produce Skew-T plots of recent aircraft profiles, which can be found here. Here’s a plot of the observations from a flight into Chicago’s Midway Airport at 9:58 AM (1558 UTC) this morning. Note how the layer between the surface and the nocturnal inversion is fully saturated. Unlike radiosondes, where the disposable sensors often struggle to record full saturation, the aircraft-based sensors can be engineered to greater precision since they’ll be reused for thousands of profiles over their lifespan.

The low visibilities over the past day did have some adverse impacts on aviation. A plane scheduled to fly from Chicago O’Hare to Bloomington-Normal in central Illinois made it as far as the vicinity of its destination before having to divert all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, due to the low visibilities. The flight track, from FlightAware, is seen here:

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A total lunar eclipse occurred on 03 March 2026, with totality beginning at 1104 UTC and ending at 1202 UTC (source). A sequence of VIIRS Day/Night Band images (acquired by the VIIRS Direct Broadcast ground station at SSEC/CIMSS) viewed using RealEarth (above) showed how the land surface and clouds were brightly illuminated by the Full Moon across much of eastern North America around 0644 UTC (prior to the beginning of the eclipse) — with illumination gradually diminishing across western North America and the eastern Pacific by about 1029 UTC (about 40 minutes into the partial phase of the eclipse).

A composite of NOAA-20 Day/Night Band image swaths from the VIIRS Today site is shown below.

An AWIPS view of three consecutive Suomi-NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band images centered over Alaska (below) included an image within the period of totality (around 1144 UTC — the brighter city lights of Anchorage and Fairbanks along with those of oil drilling operations along the northern coast of Alaska near Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay were apparent in that otherwise dark image; the subtle glow of WNW-ESE oriented stripes of aurora borealis also appeared in the image). The sublunar longitude at mid-eclipse was at 170°37′ W longitude.

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5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) included plots of surface wind barbs — which showed a general easterly to southeasterly flow in the vicinity of Lake Erie, as high pressure was moving east of the Great Lakes (surface analyses) on 02 March 2026. A number of new ice leads opened across the eastern portion of the lake, while other leads that were already present were seen to grow in length and/or width.

A faster animation of GOES-19 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) helped to emphasize the west-southwestward drift of ice in Lake Erie (as well as the northward drift of ice within the far southern part of Lake Huron).

A closer look at GOES-19 True Color RGB imagery over Lake St. Clair (below) revealed an abrupt ice fracture that opened in the southeast portion of the lake — which pushed a large amount of ice westward (and even forced a few small ice floes to travel down the north end of the Detroit River).

RCM-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) imagery (below) provided a very detailed view of the Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair ice structure — including pre-existing ice leads — prior to sunrise.

On the following day, a combined analysis of Ice Concentration and Level Ice Thickness (below) indicated that much of the Lake Erie ice was at 9-10 Tenths concentration (red), with a maximum thickness of 12-28 inches (cross-hatched).

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