A selection of several GOES ABI loops during 2022 and 2023 showcased the diverse range of features observed, which included volcanic ash plumes, hurricanes, convection, fog, smoke, fires, dust and ice.

It’s very hard to choose just one event from every month of the year, but the goal here is to show a variety of phenomena and locations that NOAA‘s GOES ABI routinely monitors, in this case during 2024. Most loops generated are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison CIMSS Satellite Blog, which is linked to in the titles at the top of each monthly entry. Imagery from GOES-16 and -18 (and -19) are showcased, along with the ABI’s sectors: Full Disk (10-min intervals), Contiguous U.S. (5-min intervals) and Mesoscale sectors (30-sec to 1-min intervals).

Similar loop as above, but with a 1-min duration. Note that for several days in March that 16 UTC images were used.

Similar as above, but over 1-min.

January Single-banded snow squall along the length of Lake Michigan

The mesovortices were also well forecast and observed by radar.

February The Smokehouse Creek Fire

GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB over north Texas 15:06 UTC 27 February 2024 – 03:31 UTC 28 February 2024 as shown in AWIPS

The above animation (and as an animated gif).

March SpaceX Starship Test Flight 3

Note that each of the ABI spectral bands could see a signal of the SpaceX rocket launch.

Bonus material: A SUVI Animation when the Sun was being eclipsed.

The sun eclipsed by the moon as seen in a mp4 animation. Near realtime SUVI images: SSEC and SWPC.

April Time Composite Imagery of the Total Solar Eclipse

The Moon’s shadow during the total solar eclipse was observed by many ABI spectral bands.

Bonus material: 1-min Mesoscale Sector (with 5-min CONUS sectors) of an enhanced ABI band 3 (0.86 um) following the shadow:

May Hail swath across the Texas Panhandle

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Nighttime Microphysics RGB images showed a thunderstorm that moved southeast from the New Mexico / Texas border across the southern Texas Panhandle Plains on 29 May 2024. A narrow northwest-to-southeast oriented hail swath produced by this storm  — from south of Clovis, New Mexico to south of Lubbock, Texas — showed up as pale shades of beige. The Land Surface Temperature derived product showed cooling in the hail swath of more than 10F.

Bonus material: River valley fog in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa

Similar to the long forgotten fog in many river valleys in BAMS (1989) observed by GOES-7, GOES-16 showed narrow tendrils of river valley fog — along a portion of the Mississippi River and a few of its tributaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. The derived fog and low stratus product also monitored the fog, while showing the need for improved spatial resolutions.

June GOES-U Rocket Launch

The GOES-U rocket launch was monitored by both GOES-18 ABI (30-sec) and GOES-16 (1-min), these were research Mesoscale Sector requests. Note that not only was the launch and rocket separation seen, but also the booster rockets re-burn when returning to land at the Kennedy Space Center! GOES-U became GOES-19 after successfully reaching geostationary orbit.

Bonus material: Haboob in New Mexico

Double Bonus: SUVI (Solar) Imagery

July Hurricane Beryl in the central Caribbean as a Category 5 storm

The earliest Cat 5 Atlantic basin hurricane as seen with 1-min GOES-16 imagery.

Bonus material: Mesovortices seen within the eye in the ABI high resolution visible band.

August Tornado in Buffalo New York

The storms associated with a weak tornado (at 16:49 UTC) in Buffalo New York were monitored by GOES. The Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB is shown, demonstrating the glaciation of the clouds.

Bonus – Gravity waves in the Midwest.

September Early (Preliminary / Non-operational) GOES-19 Imagery

During September, GOES-19 ABI continued to collect imagery from it’s location at approximately 90W and the equator. The ABI has 2 visible, 4 near-IR (or near-visible) and 10 IR bands.

Bonus – Mesoscale imagery of Helene.

October Annular Eclipse Shadow in the Southern Hemisphere

On October 2, 2024 several of the geostationary imagers observed the Moon’s shadow in the Southern Hemisphere. An example from the ABI on GOES-19 is below. A CIMSS true color loop doesn’t create the artificial colors that can happen in Raleigh-corrected composite imagery.

November Prolonged eruptive period of Popocatépetl in Mexico

A prolonged eruptive period of Popocatépetl occurred during 22 October – 4 November 2024. Ash RGB images showed the periodic pulses of ash from Popocatépetl.

A number of derived products, such as a radiometrically-retrieved Ash Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site showed that the volcanic plume occasionally reached altitudes of 12 km or greater.

Bonus – Power Plant Plume Produces Precipitation

According to Scott Bachmeier, CIMSS “The Nighttime Microphysics RGB did a good job of highlighting the industrial plume — then after sunrise, True Color RGB imagery showed that the plume had seeded the cloud layer enough to cause it to dissipate as it produced the snowfall (sort of like the aircraft-induced “fall streak” effect).”

December Combined GOES West and East IR images

While the animation below does not start in the month of December, it does end in that month. This is a combined GOES-West and East ABI band 13 composite image, in a Mollweide projection. This loop shows hourly data, as does this near realtime web page.

Similar animations as above, from June 1 to December 13, but with playback durations of 1 and 2 minutes. The location of 7-day (hourly) animations for a few of the ABI bands.

Similar loop as above, but showing almost all of 2024. Note: large mp4 file. Or a smaller, once per day mp4.

Bonus – Blowing Snow RGB from GOES-19 ABI (by Bill Line) — CIMSS Satellite Blog post on Blowing Snow

Double Bonus – Severe weather across the Bay Area of California

H/T

Thanks to all who make the GOES imagery possible, the ingest and software to display the imagery (including, but not limited to McIDAS-X, geo2grid, geosphere, Real Earth and AWIPS) and all who generated CIMSS Satellite Blog entries, especially Scott Lindstrom and Scott Bachmeier. Special thanks to Mat Gunshor and Jim Nelson of the UW/CIMSS AWG Imagery Team. T. Schmit works for NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, is stationed in Madison WI, and will be retiring from federal service at the end of 2024.

A similar ‘Year in Review’ for 2021; 2022 by NOAA Satellites.

Also, some “top 25” GOES-16 and GOES-17 ABI loops. Also see the Satellite Liaison Blog.

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GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) showed the hazy signature of a narrow plume of blowing dust that developed across West Texas on 30 December 2024. Lofted by strong NW winds behind a dryline, this blowing dust briefly reduced the surface visibility to 3.5 miles at Big Spring (KBPG) and 7 miles at Snyder (KSNK).

True Color RGB and Dust RGB images — created using Geo2Grid — from GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) (above) and GOES-16 (below) revealed that the blowing dust’s light magenta signature in Dust RGB imagery was apparent before its hazy tan signature became evident in True Color RGB imagery.

Also of note was the earlier appearance of the dust’s hazy tan signature in GOES-16 True Color RGB imagery compared to GOES-19, as seen in a toggle of 2101 UTC images (below). This was due to a larger (and thus more favorable) forward scattering geometry from GOES-16 (positioned farther east over the Equator at 75.2°W longitude) compared to GOES-19 (positioned at 89.5°W longitude, during its post-launch testing).

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5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) True Color RGB and Blowing Snow RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) displayed a small patch of radiation fog over Lake Mendota that slowly dissipated during the morning hours on 25th December 2024 (the Blowing Snow RGB is a modified version of the Day Snow-Fog RGB, which uses higher spatial resolution Band 2 imagery in place of Band 3 as the Red component). Much of Lake Mendota was still ice-free (although some ice growth had occurred along parts of the shoreline) — but nocturnal radiational cooling allowed the surface air temperature at nearby airports to reach minimum values of 9ºF at Middleton (KC29) and 10ºF at Madison (KMSN). The Lake Mendota fog did briefly move inland across the southern and western edges of the lake.

5-minute GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (below) showed the fog dissipating over the western half of Lake Mendota as surface air temperatures began to warm after sunrise.

UW-SSEC/AOS north-facing rooftop camera images (below) revealed multiple incursions of the Lake Mendota fog into the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus, located just south of the lake (both before and after sunrise).

Thanks to Tim Schmit (NOAA/NESDIS/STAR) for bringing this interesting case to our attention (and also taking ground truth photo1 and photo2 of the fog on campus).

Local #fog advection https://t.co/K4d9vjINEK; ?@NOAASatellites? #GOES16 Madison #WIwx ?@UWSSEC? ?@UWCIMSS? pic.twitter.com/njAjw4T97w

— Tim Schmit (@GOESguy) December 25, 2024

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5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and Fire Mask derived product images (above) displayed a pronounced thermal signature associated with an eruption in the Halema’uma’u crater (located within the Kilauea summit caldera) on the Big Island of Hawai’i, which began around 1220 UTC (2:20 AM HST) on 23rd December 2024. Yellow pixels in the Fire Mask product denoted 3.9 µm brightness temperatures that had reached 137.88ºC — the saturation temperature of GOES-18 ABI Band 7 detectors — which first occurred at 1251 UTC, about 30 minutes after eruption onset.

Since the Kilauea eruption began during the nighttime hours, its thermal signature was also apparent in GOES-18 Near-Infrared 0.86 µm, 1.61 µm and 2.24 µm spectral bands (below).

GOES-18 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) showed the southwest transport of volcanic fog (vog) — a mixture of SO₂, CO₂ and water vapor — from the Kilauea eruption site.

GOES-18 SO2 RGB images from RealEarth (below) confirmed the presence of SO2 (lighter shades of cyan) within the vog plume that was drifting southwest from Kilauea — the cluster of dark blue pixels denoted the thermal anomaly associated with the eruption site.

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