4 May 2017

Looking at Lightning From On High! The GLM Works!

Posted by Dan Satterfield

The new GOES-16 weather satellite has something no geostationary weather satellite has ever had before.

An instrument that can see lightning. In real time.

It’s called the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM for short), and while we have been seeing some real time images from GOES-16 for over a month now, the GLM is still being checked out. Today, NASA and Lockheed released some new video of the GLM in action and It looks like it is working great! This data will be a revolutionary change for synoptic meteorologists like me and for severe storm researchers who are trying to understand how we can give more reliable warnings of severe weather (with fewer false alarms).

Take a look!

And below, this from the GOES-16 IR channel showing the same storms exploding. I am already using this data every day to forecast and it already seems like the days of not having a satellite image every 5 mins. was the dark ages!

How quickly we adapt to new technology and take it for granted!