I remember learning about weather forecasting in college in the late 2000s. My classmates and I would draw maps showing current weather systems and then look at satellite data to get a picture of what would happen in the next few hours and days.
NOAA’s weather satellites were good back then, but compared to what we have in orbit today, the difference is like night and day. As a broadcast meteorologist, I used the data they provided to deliver life-saving information and early warnings to billions of people across the United States and even the Caribbean when threatening weather was approaching.
And when GOES-U launches on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on June 25, it will complete NOAA’s GOES-R weather satellite constellation, expanding the capabilities of its siblings and bringing a greater focus to space weather.
NOAA’s Geostationary Environmental Satellites (GOES) are nothing new; they have been providing scientists with a steady stream of data and images from space since 1975. But over the decades, technological advances and the experience gained from each satellite launched to date have led to significant improvements in the instruments and products of the newer models.
The latest constellation of the GOES family began in November 2016, when the first of four satellites, GOES-R, was launched. At the time, I was working at KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara, California, and had the opportunity to An exclusive feature when preliminary data became available to scientists across the United States.
I interviewed the team of National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists in the Los Angeles office to hear how the variety of images and observations was useful in their various roles. The meteorologists reported how they incorporated these into their forecasts and used them to issue alerts to warn the public of bad weather, and also how incredible they were compared to anything they had used before.
More than seven years later, three of the four satellites in the series are now orbiting the Earth. Scientists and researchers are pleased with the results and say that the advanced technology represents a turning point.
“I think it has really lived up to its reputation in thunderstorm forecasting. Meteorologists can track the development of convection in near real time, giving them better insight into storm development and severity, leading to better warnings,” John Cintineo, a researcher at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), said in an email to Space.com.
“The GOES-R series not only provides observations where radar coverage is lacking, but it often provides a robust signal ahead of the radar, such as when a storm is getting stronger or weaker. I’m sure there have been many other improvements in forecasting and environmental monitoring over the past decade, but this is where I’ve seen the most significant improvements,” Cintineo said.
In addition to helping predict severe thunderstorms, each satellite collects images and data on heavy rainfall that can trigger flooding, detects low clouds and fog as they form, and provides significant improvements in forecasts and services during hurricane season.
“GOES provides our hurricane forecasters with faster, more accurate and more detailed data that is critical to assessing a storm’s intensity. This includes cloud-top cooling, convective structures, specific features of a hurricane’s eye, wind speeds aloft and lightning activity,” said Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), in an email to Space.com.
Instruments such as the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) has three times more spectral channels, four times higher image quality and five times higher image speed than the previous GOES satellites. Geostationary Lightning Cartograph (GLM) is the first of its kind in the GOES-R series orbit, allowing scientists to observe lightning around the clock, as well as impacts that touch the Earth and travel from cloud to cloud.
“The GOES-U and GOES-R satellites provide scientists and meteorologists with weather monitoring of the entire Western Hemisphere at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales,” said Cintineo. “Data from these satellites help researchers develop new tools and methods to solve problems such as lightning prediction, 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 forecasts from global and regional numerical weather models through improved data assimilation.”
Although GOES-U will be similar to its siblings, it will be unique in that it will feature improvements to its instruments based on what scientists have learned from the three satellites currently in orbit.
What will set GOES-U apart from the others, however, is a new sensor on board, the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR), which will monitor the weather outside Earth’s atmosphere and keep an eye on what space weather events are taking place that could impact our planet.
“It will be the first near real-time operational coronagraph that we have access to. This is a huge leap for us because up until now we’ve always relied on a research coronagraph instrument 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.
“This is exciting because now I don’t have to wait for the data to download, because sometimes current coronagraph images 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 hit the Earth and give us big geomagnetic storms like we had last month.”
Before getting into space weather forecasting, Steenburgh was a terrestrial weather meteorologist. He says these next-generation satellites have revolutionized the way scientists make forecasts. He says technological advances since the 1980s have given Earth and space weather meteorologists the tools they need to strengthen their reliability and improve the accuracy of their forecasts.
“One of the biggest changes was probably the introduction of Doppler weather radar, which blew me away. It was a huge leap in terms of possibilities and I felt like I was part of the Golden Era of meteorology,” said Steenburgh. “I got involved in space weather around 2005 and was lucky enough to witness a very similar evolution in the field, which was just amazing. When I started, I had three numerical models that I worked with more or less routinely.
“I now have more than 16 observation platforms that I could never have imagined, with data quality in terms of temporal and spatial resolution that exceeds my wildest dreams. I am fortunate to be living in another Golden Age,” added Steenburgh.