Aurora Borealis made a return appearance to the northern United States early in the morning on 12 August. Imagery above from the VIIRS Imagery Viewer, which viewer repackages Direct Broadcast imagery processed at CIMSS with CSPP software, shows the aurora over the eastern USA at 0704 UTC o 12 August as captured by NOAA-21. The image below shows the Aurora at 0843 UTC on 12 August — on NOAA-21’s next pass over the USA. The character of the Aurora has certainly changed in the 90+ minutes!

---

The Aurora was also present on 13 August, but it did not extend quite so far to the south, being more restricted to northern Canada, as shown below.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-16 Clean Window infrared (Band 13, 10.3 µm) images from 2-9 August 2024 show the development of Debby over the greater Antilles and then northward from Cuba, landfall in Florida and subsequent slow progress north along the eastern United States coastline, finally exiting the region on 9 August. The above animation was created using geo2grid software.

View only this post Read Less

GOES-18 Clean Window infrared imagery, below, shows the development and evolution of Emilia and Fabio over the eastern Pacific Ocean (four named systems existed at one time in this animation; Emilia and Fabio are the two easternmost systems). The animation then shows the demise of Fabio (late on 7 August) as it moved over colder waters and then its remnants were absorbed into Emilia before the end of the animation.

View only this post Read Less

The National Weather Service forecast office on Guam has a Direct Broadcast antenna, and CSPP software takes the downloaded signal and creates useful imagery. The example below shows JAXA’s GCOM AMSR-2 imagery at 36.5 and 89.0 GHz, and the structure of the low-level circulation (36.5 GHz) and upper-level clouds (89.0 GHz) are apparent. In the 36.5 GHz imagery, it’s likely the orange/red features are rain-producing clouds The 89.0 GHz imagery is coldest (yellow and red in that enhancement) where ice features are present because ice scatters 89.0 GHz energy very effectively. (The Joint Typhoon Warning Center has information on this storm here).

---

Thanks to Douglas Schumacher, CIMSS, for forwarding along this imagery. But what if you don’t have the helpful Douglas to send you imagery? In that case, you can use Polar2Grid to create imagery from files downloaded from JAXA’s GPortal! That website allows a registered users (free registration!) to select specified data from a specific day over a specified region as shown in the succession of screen captures below.

The downloaded data can be processed with Polar2Grid software (using the -r amsr2_lib flag that reads AMSR-2 Level 1b data). This software can then produce imagery as shown below — looking very similar to the data from the Direct Broadcast antenna, but covering a larger area.

A user can then get Himawari data (from, for example, an Amazon bit bucket) and use Geo2grid software to create imagery, shown below, with the same map projection as used for the Polar2grid imagery!

Combinations of Visible and Enhanced infrared imagery with the color-enhanced Microwave data are shown below. The combination of polar and geostationary satellite data yields a more complete understanding of the system.

---

MIMIC Total Precipitable Water fields, below, show abundant moisture in the West Pacific including over Marianas Islands and Micronesia. A picture of rain on Guam from the WCM (Thanks Landon!) led me to investigate this system.

View only this post Read Less