The satellites can frequently detect fires before they are seen on ground – sometimes even before 911 calls. Together with the GOES-16 (GOES East), which covers the Eastern United States, the satellites track weather patterns across the country. The GOES-18, launched in March this year, and the GOES-17 (GOES West) before it, look out over the western United States, Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific Ocean. “And now we’re seeing the fruits of that assessment in these latest improvements.” “This generation of satellites was conceived in the early 2000s, when we assessed the needs of our users and what would be helpful to them in terms of, say, better cloud observations or better fire detection,” says Dan Lindsey, a research meteorologist at NOAA and program scientist on the GOES-R team. New improvements give GOES satellites the ability to detect and monitor fires, see how smoke from wildfires is moving, track hurricanes and atmospheric rivers as they travel over California, and detect low clouds and fog.
#Goes west image viewer series
The first satellite in the current GOES-R series launched in 2016 to cover the Eastern United States.Īs the name suggests, the satellites orbit above the equator at the same speed the Earth rotates, essentially “seeing” the same region of the United States to track atmospheric conditions and hazards in near real-time. Every few years, new and improved versions are made.
NOAA has been sending GOES satellites into orbit since GOES-1 launched in 1975. It also aids forecasters in issuing severe storm warnings, because it detects rapid increases in lightning flash rates, which are often a precursor to severe thunderstorms. If it sees a storm system move through, and detects lightning in an area that’s particularly dry, it can help researchers infer when a fire has started. In places like Northern California, the Lightning Mapper can keep constant watch over an area that is considered a fire hazard. The visuals resembled a moving band of fireworks through the clouds as the storm pulsed across the map. In May, the latest of NOAA’s geostationary operational environmental satellites, or GOES, captured images of lightning as a derecho moved across the Northern Plains through an instrument called the Geostationary Lightning Mapper. A new environmental satellite, launched this spring, offers that potential, with constant and real-time views of atmospheric conditions over the Western United States and Pacific Ocean. But NOAA hopes some of the harmful effects can be reduced with better monitoring. And research now suggests that climate change could cause an increase in lightning strikes over the continental United States, which will likely lead to more wildfires being ignited by them. Between 20, Northern California has witnessed 2,093 lightning-induced wildfires.
Nine of the 20 largest wildfires in California in the last 110 years were started by lightning strikes, including the devastating Lightning Complex fires in August 2020 that burned more than 750,000 acres in and around the Bay Area. One of the first images of the Western Hemisphere taken with the GOES-18 satellite.
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