GOES-14 SRSOR Visible Imagery (click image to play animation)

GOES-14 will be in Super-Rapid Scan mode for the next several weeks, meaning 1-minute imagery will be available over various footprints. The imagery from Aug 16 2012, above, shows the central United States, with morning convection over the western Great Lakes and convection over the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma.

Friday’s view will be over AL, centered near 35 N, 85 W. See this website for details.

GOES-14 SRSOR 0.62 µm and 10.7 µm Imagery (click image to play animation)

The one-minute imagery allows the satellite to show the ephemeral nature of overshooting tops. Consider the active convection over central Illinois. Cold cloud tops (as cool as -70 C) develop and decay over the 15-minute loop above (the overshoots are evident in the visible imagery as well). Present GOES imagery has a routine refresh rate of every 15 minutes; overshooting tops can easily be missed at that rate. GOES-R will routinely produce imagery every 5 minutes, allowing for better detection of overshooting tops. The images within the loop also show nice examples of transverse banding (over eastern Iowa) and gravity waves propagating outwards from the overshooting tops.

(Added: Click here for a big animated gif image of visible imagery. Size: 69 Mb).

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GOES-14 10.7 µm imagery (click image to play animation)

GOES-14 has been turned on and placed in normal mode for an annual north-south maneuver. It was placed in storage back in November 2010 to preserve battery power and payload (it was briefly brought out of storage in 2011). GOES-14 is overhead at approximately 105 degrees West longitude. The loop above of the 10.7 µm ‘window’ channel shows the first of the images after broadcast was initiated. SRSOR (Super Rapid-Scan Operations — that is, generation of 1-minute imagery over a limited domain) is planned to occur within the next few months, starting on 16 August. Current plans are for the SRSOR to be over Oklahoma on Thursday the 16th, and over the Tropics on Friday the 17th. More information is available here.

GOES-14 Visible Imagery over British Columbia

GOES-14 Visible Imagery over Florida

One of the first tasks when a GOES instrument is reactivated is a testing of the navigation. The two images above show that the accuracy of the navigation has not been affected by the satellite storage.

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Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 µm Day/Night Band, 11.45 µm IR, and 11.45-3.74 µm “fog/stratus product” images

A comparison of AWIPS images of the Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 µm Day/Night Band (DNB), the 11.45 µm IR channel, and the 11.45-3.74 µm “fog/stratus product” (above) showed well-defined signatures of the aurora borealis (or “Northern Lights”) across central Canada on 09 August 2012. Comparison with the corresponding 11.45 µm IR channel image and the 11.45-3.74 µm “fog/stratus product” confirmed that the brighter DNB features (the wide west-to-east oriented band that stretched across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, as well as the separate more complex feature over northern Manitoba) were indeed signatures of the aurora, and not high-level or low-level cloud features.

The Auroral Oval map from the Space Weather Prediction Center  (below) showed that the southern edge of the auroral oval extended far southward across Canada at that time.

Space Weather Prediction Center auroral oval map

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Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel + 11.45 µm IR channel images

An unusually strong area of low pressure moved northward into the Arctic Ocean and intensified during the 05 August – 08 August 2012 time period — a storm this deep (965 hPa central pressure) is exceptional for the Arctic Ocean region, especially during the summer month of August. A comparison of AWIPS images of Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel and 11.45 µm IR channel images with an overlay of the surface pressure analysis  (above) showed the cloud patterns associated with the storm around 00 UTC on 08 August.

Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel images (click image to play animation)

Animations of Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel images (above; click image to play animation) and 11.45 µm IR channel images (below; click image to play animation) showed the evolution of the storm over the Arctic Ocean during the 06 August – 08 August period.

Suomi NPP VIIRS 11.45 µm IR channel image (click image to play animation)

McIDAS images of Terra MODIS 11.0 µm IR channel data (below; click image to play animation; images courtesy of Dave Santek, SSEC) showed the storm moving poleward during the 05 August – 08 August time period. Barrow, Alaska was in the warm sector of the storm on 05 August, and recorded a daily high temperature of 60º F (with a peak wind gust from the southwest at 41 mph). Two days later, strong cold air advection in the wake of the storm (with a peak westerly wind gust of 33 mph) kept the daily high temperature at Barrow down to 39º F.

Terra MODIS 11.0 µm IR channel images (click image to play animation)

The circulation of the deep low could be easily identified using atmospheric motion vectors (cloud-tracked winds) derived from a variety of polar-orbiting satellites (below).

IR images and atmospheric motion vectors from a variery of polar-orbiing satellites

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