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Dixie fire, 26 July 2021 Image of the Month, 15 May 2021 Mount Etna Eruption, 15 March 2021 Snowfall Rate Tracks Snowstorm, 15 February 2021 Snowfall Rate Captures Winte Storm, 16-17 December 2020 Total Solar Eclipse, 14 December 2020 OMPS Aerosol Index Tracks Smoke, 16 September 2020 Impact of Wildfires, 15 September 2020 Alaska Cloud Demonstration, 2 September 2020 MiRS Rain Rate, 23-27 August 2020 Hurricane Laura, 25 August 2020 Heatwave monitoring, 19-24 June 2020 Siberia Fires, 23 June 2020 Image of the Month, 29 May 2020 COVID-19 Impact, 31 March 2020

Fires spreading as seen by VIIRS
Don Hillger; Jorel Torres (VIIRS Imagery Team)

26-Jul-21 - This VIIRS Fire Temp RGB animation shows Dixie Fire in California. There was significant fire spread to the north and to the east over the past few days. The fire has burnt ~197K + acres, as of this morning. The VIIRS Day Land Cloud Fire RGB animation also captured the event

Worlds largest ice burg A-76 captured by VIIRS DNB
Don Hillger (VIIRS Imagery Team)

15-May-21 - VIIRS GeoColor image of iceberg A-76 (~1668 km2) that broke off of the Antarctic ice shelf (image from 2021-05-15 21:39:16 UTC)

Mount Etna eruption observed by VOLCAT system
Michael Pavolonis (Volcanic Ash Team)

15-Mar-21 - Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily periodically erupts, sending plumes of ash over the Mediterranean Sea. The latest series of eruptions and lava flows began in mid-February and continued through March.
The images at left show various ways of looking at the eruption from the VOLCAT system for March 15, 2021. The combination of VIIRS and CrIS are used to detect and characterize volcanic SO2 emissions. CrIS allows for accurate estimates of height and loading. VIIRS supports spatial mapping.

Snowfall Rate Tracks Snowstorm
Huan Meng (SFR Team)

15-Feb-21 - The enterprise snowfall rate (SFR) product is retrieved from passive microwave sensors such as ATMS aboard ten satellites including NOAA-20 and S-NPP. With the suite of satellites, the product tracked the intense snowstorm that occurred in Texas and moved to the Midwest on February 15, 2021.

Snowfall Rate Captures Winte Storm
Huan Meng (SFR Team)

17-Dec-20 - A winter storm brought intense snowfall to a large swath of the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast on December 16-17. The total snow accumulation broke the all-time record in part of Pennsylvania. The microwave snowfall rate (SFR) product captured the storm with a suite of satellites including NOAA-20 and S-NPP.
Left column: NOAA-20 SFR product;
Right column: the corresponding gauge-corrected MRMS hourly precipitation.

NOAA-20 Captures Total Solar Eclipse
Don Hillger (VIIRS Imagery Team)

14-Dec-20 - NOAA-20 VIIRS Imagery product (Day Land Cloud RGB) from ~17:13 UTC, 14 December 2020 showing the impact of the total eclipse on this imagery product: NOAA-20 VIIRS captured Total Solar Eclipse over South America with dark hole at center of eclipse.

OMPS Aerosol Index Tracks Smoke
Lawrence Flynn (OMPS Ozone Team)

16-Sep-20 - The Ultraviolet Absorbing Aerosol Index values from the total ozone retrieval product for the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite track the progress of large amount smoke as they are transported away from fires in California.

Impact of CA/OR/WA Wildfires
Istvan Laszlo; Shobha Kondragunta (Aerosol Team)

15-Sep-20 - To understand the impact of CA/OR/WA Wildfires on air quality, Aerosol team had a new algorithm to derive PM2.5 using SNPP+NOAA-20 VIIRS AOD. The image shows surface mean PM2.5 due to fires leading to unsafe air quality compared to what it was in 2019.
Upper: PM2.5 for August 15 - September 15, 2020
Bottom: PM2.5 for August 15 - September 15, 2019

Alaska Cloud Demonstration
Andrew Heidinger (Cloud Team)

2-Sep-20 - The Enterprise Cloud products are being used in Alaska as part of the JPSS Aviation Initiative. VIIRS IR image with selected flight paths over AK (left) and sample cloud vertical cross-sections (right) with PIREPs and NUCAPS temperature data. The official JPSS Alaska Cloud Demonstration started from Sep.1, 2020 and last 90 days for user feedback and product evaluation.

MiRS Rain Rate
Mark Liu; Christopher Grassotti (MiRS Team)

27-Aug-20 - Sequence of MiRS retrieved rain rate from NOAA-20/ATMS from 23-27 August 2020. Both Hurricane Laura and Tropical Storm Marco are depicted with microwave precipitation rate exceeding 10-15 mm/hour.

ICVS-HWCS: Hurricane Laura
Banghua Yan (ICVS Team)

25-Aug-20 - ICVS-HWCS Hurricane Watch product provides near real time hurricane or tropical storm warm core 3-D structure watch to estimate the intensity using ATMS and VIIRS data. The 3D animation of the Hurricane Laura on August 25, 2020 that captured the temperature differences between the outer and the inner portions of the hurricane, known as the upper-level warm core structure, provides unique views of the storm. The images are generated using the vertical temperature profiles derived from limb corrected and gap-filing ATMS data from channels 5 through 12 and the VIIRS cloud top reflectivity at band I1 (0.64µm) as background.

Heatwave monitoring in high latitude
Yunyue Yu (VIIRS LST Team)

24-Jun-20 - The daily gridded VIIRS LST was used for heatwave detection which indicates the heatwave occurrence on June 19-24, 2020 in high latitude around 70 degree. The cross symbol denotes the location of Verhojanck, Russia.

Siberia Fires
Don Hillger (VIIRS Imagery Team)

23-Jun-20 - VIIRS Day Land Cloud Fire RGB as viewed on Polar SLIDER at 375 m-resolution, showing extensive fires over northeastern Siberia, Russia (04:05 UTC, 23 June 2020).

Image of the Month
Don Hillger (VIIRS Imagery Team)

29-May-20 - Daytime DNB image of Great Slave Lake in northern Canada, showing the frozen lake surface on 29 May 2020. The white on the right side of the picture is snow-covered land. Some smaller lakes are ice free. S-NPP DNB, 2020-05-29 19:04 UTC.

COVID-19 Impact
Changyong Cao (VIIRS SDR Team)

31-Mar-20 - COVID-19 Impact Analysis using VIIRS/DNB (Wuhan lockdown).
Before: December 19, 2019
After: February 12, 2020

Latest JSTAR Updates

N-20/SNPP Equator Crossing, Credit: VIIRS SDR science team. Detail data available at STAR.

Panel Recommendations for NOAA-20 Maturity Reviews:

*New* VIIRS Global Annual Surface Type (AST): The new VIIRS Annual Surface Type 2021 product (AST-2021, spatial resolution: 1km) based on 2021 whole year surface reflectance data is ready for users to download at STAR FTP sites.
NetCDF version:

Zip version: Each Zip file contains a *.bin, a *.hdr and a *readme.pdf file. For more information please contact Xiwu Zhan.

JPSS/GOES-R Proving Ground / Risk Reduction Summit. The 2020 JPSS/GOES-R Proving Ground / Risk Reduction Summit was successfully held during February 24-28, 2020 at NCWCP in College Park, Maryland. Users and stake holders across NOAA and outside NOAA shared their perspectives on how data produced from our missions due to STAR scientists was showcased. The presentations and posters can be found online

STAR JPSS 2018 Annual Science Team Meeting.

STAR JPSS 2017 Annual Science Team Meeting.

STAR JPSS 2016 Annual Science Team Meeting

2017 NOAA Satellite Aerosol Product Workshop

NOAA-JPSS CPO Technical Interchange Meetings (TIM)

JPSS Life-Cycle Data Reprocessing Workshop

JPSS Enterprise Algorithms Workshop

EDR LTM Site Retirement

The EDR LTM site is being retired on 31 March 2022. The EDR LTM site delivered nearly 10 years of S-NPP and NOAA-20 product images to thousands of users since 2014. It is being replaced by the JSTAR Mapper. The Mapper team has nearly completed the effort of transitioning product generation to the newer platform.

Questions about this transition should be directed to Lori Brown. After 3/31, users may request access to the EDR LTM image archive offline.

STAR JPSS Monthly Reports

For more information, please write to Alisa Young / Lihang Zhou

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