STAR JPSS Website

Hurricane Florence - 3D animation
Banghua Yan; Jingfeng Huang; STAR ICVS team

10-Sep-18 - Florence, a strong Category 4 hurricane, is moving closer to Carolinas and threatens catastrophic flooding on the East Coast. NOAA JPSS is closely watching the development of the hurricane using near real time satellite observations. This 3D animation of the Hurricane Florence on September 10^th captured the temperature differences between the outer and the inner portions of the hurricane, known as the upper-level warm core structure. The formation of such upper-level warm core is believed to be very important for the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones. Click for more images.

Hurricane Hector - seen by 3 satellites
William Straka (CIMSS); EDR LTM team

7-Aug-18 - As the hurricane approaching Hawaii island, the pass was seen by S-NPP, NOAA-20 and GCOM-W1 in the morning of 7 Aug 2018:

1. VIIRS true color Imagery from JSTAR Mapper
2. S-NPP VIIRS DNB, 12:58am HST
3. S-NPP VIIRS I-Band 5 (11 µm), 12:58am HST
4. NOAA-20 VIIRS DNB, 1:48am HST
5. NOAA-20 VIIRS I-Band 5 (11 µm), 1:48am HST

NOAA-20 Eye Candy:

Dust off the coast of Africa!

Don Hillger; Jorel Torres

1-Aug-18 - NOAA-20 VIIRS DNB eye candy, observing a large areal extent of dust, advecting west, along the African Coast.

Athens Fires
Don Hillger; Ivan Csisza; William Straka (CIMSS); Marina Tsidulko

24-Jul-18 - NOAA-20/S-NPP captured the huge fires around Athens, Greece. The top image is the NOAA-20 nighttime DNB view of Athens fires, 24 July 2018, 0055UTC. The bottom images are daytime observations of VIIRS Active Fires from S-NPP (left) and NOAA-20 (right). The colors of the fire pixels indicate detection confidence levels.

NOAA-20 SO₂ over Kilauea Hawaii
Lawrence E Flynn; Jianguo Niu; OMPS EDR team

8-Jul-18 - Measurements from instruments on both the NOAA-20 and S-NPP satellites can be used to estimate the S0₂ released into the atmosphere during the Kilauea Volcanic event. The slide show of images provides estimates of SO₂ in the lower troposphere from the NOAA-20 Linear Fit SO₂ retrieval algorithm over Kilauea Hawaii from May 1st to July 8th. Regions in the map with red coloring have estimates of over 3 Dobson Units of SO₂. Instead of using UTC time scale, these maps were plotted on the HST Hawaii local time scale, since satellite overpass are always happens between local 12:00 and 15:00 PM which corresponding to the UTC time between 22:00 PM and next day 1:00 AM period. It will cause the map being split into two separate daily maps if plotting by UTC time scale.

S-NPP SO₂ over Kilauea Hawaii
Lawrence E Flynn; Jianguo Niu; OMPS EDR team

8-Jul-18 - Measurements from instruments on both the NOAA-20 and S-NPP satellites can be used to estimate the S0₂ released into the atmosphere during the Kilauea Volcanic event. The slide show of images provides estimates of SO₂ in the lower troposphere from the Suomi NPP Linear Fit SO₂ retrieval algorithm over Kilauea Hawaii from May 1st to July 8th. Regions in the map with red coloring have estimates of over 3 Dobson Units of SO₂. Instead of using UTC time scale, these maps were plotted on the HST Hawaii local time scale, since satellite overpass are always happens between local 12:00 and 15:00 PM which corresponding to the UTC time between 22:00 PM and next day 1:00 AM period. It will cause the map being split into two separate daily maps if plotting by UTC time scale.

Super Typhoon Maria
William Straka (CIMSS)

6-Jul-18 - As people are aware, the name 'Maria' was retired off the Atlantic list of names due to the intensity of the storm that hit Puerto Rico. However, Maria is still on the Pacific list of tropical storm names. The irony is that there is now a major tropical cyclone, 'Super Typhoon', churning to the west of the US territories of Guam and Saipan. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated sustained winds 135kt (155 mph) with gusts to 165kt (189mph) in their 12Z warning.
Suomi-NPP went over at roughly 1603 UTC. This was a near nadir overpass meaning the faint lunar light provided by a last quarter moon (48% illumination) allowed visible features to be seen from the storm. While the storm is not intense enough at this time to have a well defined eye, the convective cloud tops side lit by the moon, along with some faint tropospheric gravity waves and a few lightning streaks could be seen in the DNB imagery. The same intense convection could also be seen in the IR imagery.

Hurricane Bud in VIIRS (SNPP and N20)
William Straka (CIMSS)

12-Jun-18 - As of the 3:00am MDT advisory, Hurricane Bud was a Category 4 storm with max sustained winds of 130mph and a central pressure of 948mbar.
Both SNPP and NOAA-20 observed Hurricane Bud from two separate passes at ~2:26am and ~3:16am MDT. The slide show of DNB & I05 imagery from the two passes shows that Bud was moving slightly eastward.

NOAA-20 observes Tropical Storm Aletta
William Straka (CIMSS)

7-Jun-18 - Tropical Storm Aletta is still churning in the eastern Pacific off the coast of Mexico is expected to be a hurricane later today or tomorrow. This morning's 3:10am MDT (0910Z) NOAA-20 pass was off nadir, but provided some excellent shots of the developing storm. This was the first really good shot of NOAA-20's first eastern Pacific storm as well.
As can be seen in the high res IR (375m) I05 BT imagery, one can continue to see the intense convection which is now completely surrounding the circulation. These features could clearly be seen in the Day Night Band imagery (top-left), illuminated by the waning crescent (43% illumination) moon, which was on the eastern horizon. Off the edge of the image there was some moonglint present as well.

Rivers of Ice
Don Hillger; Curtis Seaman

18-May-18 - Yakutsk, the Coldest City on Earth. Rivers near Yakutsk freeze during the winter, ice break-up in spring, and ice-up in fall. It is important to monitor the spring break-up of the ice, since the break up period is often associated with ice jams and flooding.
This animation image of VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 shows a snake-like section of ice flowing from the Aldan river into the Lena river. The 'ice snake' moved about 59 pixels (22.3 km at 375 m resolution) during the 3 hour, 21 minute duration of the animation.
See VIIRS Imagery blogs for more details.

Cyclone Mekunu
William Straka (CIMSS)

25-May-18 - Mekunu has now been classified as a Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm. It has intensified with sustained winds of 160‐170 KPH, with gusts to 190 KPH. In addition, the central pressure was ~964hPa. This now puts it as a strong Category 2 storm impacting the Gulf of Aden.
NOAA‐20 made a near nadir overpass at 2205Z on 24 May 2018, with a Waxing Gibbous (75% illumination) providing an excellent view of the convection and closed eye of Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Mekunu. The usual features of tropospheric gravity waves, intense convection were seen in the imagery. In addition, the storms hitting the Omani coast as well as the Gulf of Aden can be seen as well.

Nor'easter from NOAA-20
William Straka (CIMSS)

21-Mar-18 - The 4th Nor'easter in 3 weeks is currently impacting the east coast of the US, with a forecast amount of 3-5 inch of snow to fall in DC, causing federal offices in the area to be shut down. As the system is developing off the coast, NOAA-20 (preliminary and non-operational data), provided a near-nadir overpass at about 2:45am EDT this morning. The IR imagery caught the convection out over the Atlantic as well as some tropospheric waves along with some mountain waves flowing over the Catskills as well as the southern part of the Appalachians in eastern Tennessee.

Nor'easter from NOAA-20
William Straka (CIMSS)

21-Mar-18 - The 4th Nor'easter in 3 weeks is currently impacting the east coast of the US, with a forecast amount of 3-5 inch of snow to fall in DC, causing federal offices in the area to be shut down. As the system is developing off the coast, NOAA-20 (preliminary and non-operational data), provided a near-nadir overpass at about 2:45am EDT this morning. From the DNB imagery, some faint mesospheric gravity waves can be seen over the Atlantic propagating roughly to the north. In addition, lightning streaks can be seen near the convection associated with this storm system.

MiRS N20/ATMS Temperature at 700mb
STAR MiRS EDR team

16-Jan-18 - The top image shown is a map of atmospheric temperature at 700 millibars, approximately 3000 meters (10,000 feet), over the globe on January 16, 2018. The bottom two images shown side by side are the 700 mb temperature over North America on both January 16 (left) and January 11 (right), 2018. The most notable feature on January 16 over North America is the contrast between the extremely warm temperatures in northwestern Canada with the extreme cold, associated with a sharp dip in the jet stream over the US Midwest. The difference in temperature between the two features is more than 30 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit). Surface temperature observations confirm this extreme contrast: in Calgary, Alberta, the afternoon high temperature was 45°F on January 16^th, whereas just five days earlier the afternoon high was only -15°F. In Nashville, Tennessee the opposite fluctuation occurred: on January 11^th the high was a mere 17°F but five days later had reached 69°F. This pattern reversal is indicated in the NOAA-20 imagery, which shows the warmth focused in the eastern US, and sharply colder arctic air moving south into west-central Canada.