23 January 2017

GOES-16 First Images/Animations Released

Posted by Dan Satterfield

GOES-R first light image. Click for much larger version.

The GOES-R (Now named GOES-16) satellite is working! NOAA released the first images and animations today. The satellite is still in the test stage and will be for months but we should start seeing non-operational data by May. The image above is a high-resolution full disc shot. Below are some short loops from the ABI sensor.

The colour images are made from a blue light channel and a red light channel combined with a near-IR channel that can be used to substitute for Green, but forecasters like me care about all of the channels which allow us to see water vapour and measure cloud/water temperatures. It will be a while yet before we see the first lightning data, but that combined with the new GOES-R data in near real-time will revolutionise severe weather and longer range synoptic forecasting. Below is a look at ALL of the channels from the ABI:

Note- Grammarly corrected my typos above to UK English. I can live with that.