I remember learning about weather forecasting in college in the late 2000s. My classmates and I hand-drew maps of current weather systems and then looked at satellite data to get a picture of what was going to happen in the coming hours and days.
NOAA’s weather satellites were good back then, but compared to what we have in orbit now, the difference is night and day. As a broadcast meteorologist, I used the data they provide to communicate life-saving information and advanced warnings to billions of people across the United States and even the Caribbean when dangerous weather developed.
And when GOES-U launches June 25 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, it will complement NOAA’s constellation of GOES-R weather satellites, expanding the capabilities of its siblings and bringing a greater focus to space weather.
NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) are not new; have provided scientists with a steady stream of data and images from space since 1975. But over the decades, advances in technology and lessons learned from each satellite launched up to that point have greatly improved the tools and products available with newer models.
The newest constellation of the GOES family began in November 2016 when its first four satellites, GOES-R, launched into space. I was working at KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara, California at the time and had the opportunity to get together exclusive feature as preliminary data were available to scientists throughout the United States.
I interviewed a team of forecasters at the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service (NWS) to find out how the various images and observations are useful in each of their different roles. Meteorologists shared how it was incorporated into their forecasts and used to issue warnings to warn the public of severe weather, as well as how incredible it was compared to anything they had used before.
More than seven years later, with three of the four satellites in the series orbiting Earth, scientists and researchers say they are pleased with the results and how advanced technology has changed the game.
“I think it’s really lived up to its hype in storm forecasting. Meteorologists can see how the convection is developing in almost real time, and that gives them a better picture of the development and strength of the storms, which allows for better warnings,” John Cintineo, a researcher at the National NOAA’s Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) told Space.com via email.
“The GOES-R series not only provides observations where radar coverage is lacking, but often provides a robust signal ahead of the radar, such as when a storm is intensifying or weakening. I’m sure there have been many other improvements in environmental forecasting and monitoring over the past decade, but this is where I saw the improvement most clearly,” Cintineo said.
In addition to helping predict severe storms, each satellite collected images and data on heavy rains that could trigger flooding, detected low clouds and fog as they formed, and significantly improved forecasts and services used during hurricane season.
“GOES provides our hurricane forecasters with faster, more accurate and more detailed data critical to estimating storm intensity, including cloud cooling, convective structures, specific features of the hurricane eye, upper-level wind speeds and lightning activity,” Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service NOAA (NWS), told Space.com in an email.
Tools such as Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) it has three times the spectral channels, four times the image quality and five times the imaging speed of previous GOES satellites. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) is the first of its kind in orbit in the GOES-R series, allowing scientists to monitor lightning 24/7 and strikes that make contact with the ground and from cloud to cloud.
“The GOES-U satellites and the GOES-R series provide scientists and forecasters with weather monitoring across the entire Western Hemisphere at an unprecedented spatial and temporal scale,” Cintineo said. “Data from these satellites is helping researchers develop new tools and methods to solve problems such as lightning forecasting, sea spray identification (sea spray is dangerous to mariners), severe weather warnings, and accurate estimation of cloud movement. GOES-R’s instruments also help improve predictions from global and regional numerical weather models through better data assimilation.”
While GOES-U is similar to its siblings, it will be unique as it includes improvements to its instruments based on what scientists have learned from the three currently in orbit.
What will set GOES-U apart, however, will be a new sensor on board, the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR), which will monitor the weather outside Earth’s atmosphere and see what space weather events are happening that could affect our planet. .
“This will be the first near-real-time operational coronagraph that we will have access to. This is a huge leap for us because until now we have always depended on a research coronagraph on a spacecraft that was launched quite a long time ago.” Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), told Space.com by phone.
“So that’s exciting because now I won’t have to wait for data downloads because sometimes the actual images from the coronagraph are delayed. Sometimes we wait up to four or eight hours, and every hour counts when you’re dealing with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which sometimes they’re coming to Earth and causing us big geomagnetic storms like we had last month.”
Before forecasting space weather, Steenburgh was a meteorologist for Earth weather, and he says the way these next-generation satellites have revolutionized the way scientists can make predictions is huge. He says improvements in technology since the 1980s have given weather forecasters on Earth and in space the tools needed to build their confidence and improve forecast accuracy.
“Probably one of the biggest (changes) was the introduction of the Doppler weather radar, which amazes me. It was a big leap forward in terms of capabilities, so I felt like I was part of the golden era of meteorology,” Steenburgh said. moved around 2005 and was lucky enough to witness a very similar development in the area which was just stunning. When I started, I had three numerical models that I worked with more or less routinely.
“I now have over 16 observing platforms that I never imagined the quality of data in terms of temporal and spatial resolution beyond my wildest dreams at the beginning. I’m lucky to live in another golden era,” added Steenburgh. .