** The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing testing. **

To commemorate Earth Day 2017, Full Disk images using all 16 spectral bands on the GOES-16 ABI instrument at 17:25:22 UTC on 22 April are displayed above. One feature that was prominent in most of the shorter-wavelength bands — which are able to sense a good deal of radiation/reflectance from the Earth’s surface — was the large area of sun glint near the center of the images (over the Pacific Ocean, just west of Panama/Costa Rica). The westward migration of this sun glint signature could be followed on an animation of Visible (0.64 µm) images (below). GOES-16 remained in a Mode 4 scan strategy during much of the day (until 1930 UTC), providing Full Disk images every 5 minutes.

Taking a closer look at a portion of the Amazon River in Brazil, a comparison of Blue Visible (0.47 µm), Red Visible (0.64 µm) and Near-Infrared Vegetation (0.86 µm) band imagery (below) highlighted the ability of the 0.86 µm images to discriminate between land and water (water appears very dark). This makes 0.86 µm imagery useful for identifying and monitoring areas of inland flooding.

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** The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing testing. **

GOES-16 was operated in “Mode 4” on 21 April 2017 — this scanning strategy provides Full Disk images every 5 minutes (the current routine scan schedule for GOES-15 and GOES-13 only provides one Full Disk image every 3 hours). Shown below are animations of Upper-Level Water Vapor (6.2 µm), Mid-Level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Lower-Level Water Vapor (7.3 µm) Full Disk images covering the 12:00 to 23:55 UTC period. You can explore the differences between Water Vapor weighting functions for these 3 ABI bands (and how they change depending on airmass type, satellite viewing angle, etc) at this site.

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** The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing testing. **

A comparison of GOES-16 Visible (0.64 um) and Infrared Window (10.3 um) images (above) showed the development of Tropical Storm Arlene in the Atlantic Ocean on 20 April 2017.  Arlene has been one of only two tropical storms to be observed in the Atlantic Basin during the month of April in the satellite era.

A DMSP-15 SSMI Microwave (85 GHz) image from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below) revealed the formative stage of a convective ring around the core of Arlene at 1654 UTC.

The MIMIC Total Precipitable Water product (below) showed that Tropical Depression 1 / Arlene was embedded within a plume of modest TPW (30-40 mm) which was wrapping into a large mid-latitude cyclone to the west.

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 ** The GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing testing. **

A comparison of GOES-16 Lower-level (7.3 µm), Mid-level (6.9 µm) and Upper-level (6.2 µm) Water Vapor images (above) revealed the presence of numerous mountain waves over parts of California and Nevada on 13 April 2017. The more pronounced of these waves were caused by strong southwesterly winds interacting with  higher terrain of the Sierra Nevada.

A 3-satellite comparison of GOES-15 (GOES-West), GOES-16 and GOES-13 (GOES-East) Water Vapor images (below) highlighted 2 factors that allowed better detection of these mountain waves by GOES-16 — improved spatial resolution (2 km for GOES-16 at satellite sub-point, vs 4 km for GOES-15/13), and a more direct satellite viewing angle (GOES-16 is positioned at 105ºW longitude, while GOES-15 is at 135ºW and GOES-13 is at 75ºW).

Note that there were no Visible cloud features associated with many of the waves seen on Water Vapor imagery (below); encounters of Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) often occur with these types of mountain waves, as seen by scattered pilot reports of moderate turbulence (plotted as Category 4).

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