The Bezymianni volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula erupted at 0345 UTC on 20 December 2017 — an animation of Himawari-8 Infrared Window (10.4 µm) images and retrieved Ash Cloud Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (above) indicated that the ash reached heights of 18 km (the Tokyo VAAC estimated the ash height to be 50,000 feet or 15.2 km).

An oblique view using GOES-15 (GOES-West) Visible (0.63 µm) images (below) provided a different perspective of the volcanic cloud immediately following the eruption. The surface report from Shemya (PASY), located in the far western portion of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, is plotted in the lower right corner of the images.

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GOES-16, which has been sending data from the GOES-East position since 14 December, became the operational GOES-East satellite at 2100 UTC on 18 December, succeeding GOES-13 [which itself became GOES-East, succeeding GOES-12, in April 2010; (this post, from April 2003, is the first one with GOES-12 as the operational GOES-East, it took over for GOES-8 that month!) ].  The animation above shows all 16 Bands of the first operational CONUS image from GOES-16.

 

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When GOES-16 shifted from its checkout position at 89.5º W Longitude to its position at 75.2º W Longitude (where it will be operational as GOES-East), the domain for the Continental US (CONUS) domain shifted slightly. In ‘Flex Mode‘ (also known as ‘Mode 3‘) of GOES-16 Scanning (and also in the proposed Mode 6), routine CONUS scans occur every 5 minutes. The image above, courtesy Mat Gunshor of CIMSS, shows the GOES-West CONUS scan in green, the GOES-R CONUS scan from the Check-out Location at 89.5º W Longitude in Red, and the GOES-16 CONUS scan domain in blue.

The center point of the CONUS domain, as documented in Table 5.1.2.7-5 from the GOES-R Product Definition and User’s Guide (PUG), shows a shift from 29.24º North Latitude, 91.41º West Longitude (at the check-out location) to 30.08º North Latitude, 87.1º West Longitude (at the operational GOES-East location).  As a result, the entire island of Puerto Rico is now in the CONUS sector, and the northern boundary has shifted farther north into central and western Canada, by about 100 miles.

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A comparison of GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Near-Infrared “Cirrus (1.38 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) revealed a number of aircraft contrails drifting eastward across Virginia during the morning hours on 18 December 2017. Note how many of the individual contrails were easier to identify and follow in the sequence of 1-minute interval Mesoscale Sector images.

A Cirrus band is also available on the MODIS instrument (aboard Terra and Aqua) as well as the VIIRS instrument (aboard Suomi NPP and NOAA-20) — a toggle between the Terra MODIS Cirrus (1.375 µm),  Infrared Window (11.0 µm) and Visible (0.65 µm) images at 1607 UTC (below) again showed that contrails and other ice crystal cloud features were better highlighted on the Cirrus image.

The 12 UTC rawinsonde profile from Washington Dulles Airport in northern Virginia (below) showed a relatively moist layer in the upper troposphere near the 300 hPa (9.5 km or 31,000 ft) level, which is a common altitude for commercial jets to fly — this likely contributed to the longevity of many of the contrail features.

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