STAR JPSS Website
2025 Antarctic Ozone Hole
Larry Flynn
3 Dec 2025 - The Joint NASA/NOAA Ozone Hole press release has been released and can be found at - https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-nasa-2025-ozone-hole-is-5th-smallest-since-1992.
Scientists with NOAA and NASA have ranked this year’s ozone hole over the Antarctic as the fifth smallest since 1992 — the year that the Montreal Protocol, a landmark international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals began to take effect. The small size is due to a combination of dynamics, with a weaker than average polar vortex, and the continued decline of ozone depleting substances in the stratosphere thanks to international control of their production and release.
Hurricane Melissa strikes Jamaica
Bill Line
3 Dec 2025 - On October 28 Hurricane Mellisa became the strongest landfalling hurricane in the recorded history of the Atlantic Basin when it struck southwestern Jamaica with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and central pressure as low as 892 mb. The image shown here shows the night lights (observed using the VIIRS Day/Night Band) on a clear night before the hurricane (September 29) and after (October 31). The damage to the electric infrastructure of the island is easily visible.
December image of the month - Large low pressure over North Atlantic
Bill Line
17 Feb 2026 - On 16 Dec 2025 the VIIRS Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB Imagery Composite captured a broad low pressure system over the north Atlantic Ocean. The low was located just south of Greenland with a cold front that extended all the way to the Bahamas.
VIIRS+CRIS detects Ethiopian volcanic eruption
Mike Pavolonis
17 Feb 2026 - The VIIRS experimental processing system at UW-CIMSS captured a large ash cloud from the Hayli Gubbi volcano on November 23, 2025. This was the first time this volcano has been known to erupt. Additionally, the VIIRS+CrIS SO2 algorithm detected and characterized the SO2 emissions associated with the eruption as it was advected to the east over the Red Sea and eventually as far east as China. This example highlights the utility of JPSS observations for volcano monitoring.
VIIRS+CRIS detects Hawaiian volcanic eruption
Mike Pavolonis
17 Feb 2026 - VOLCAT will replace the JPSS Volcanic Ash EDR upon successful transition to NOAA operations within NCCF. The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been going through cyclic lava fountaining episodes through much of 2025. These lava fountain events often produce large amounts of lava in the Kilauea crater, small amounts of SO2 and minimal volcanic ash. The episode on December 6, 2025 was unusual in its intensity and illustrates the value of volcano monitoring using both GEO and LEO observations.
January Image of the month - US East Coast Snow Storm
Bill Line
17 Feb 2026 - The late January winter storm that affected areas from Texas to New England featured an unusually large region of sleet and freezing rain. The VIIRS Snowbelt RGB image captured these differences well, distinguishing between the light, fluffy snow that dominated the northern part of the storm, and the ice and sleet on the southern periphery. The image shows the 26 Jan 2026 VIIRS Snowmelt RGB with NWS local storm reports (LSRs) overlaid, which shows how the RGB differentiates snow cover (lighter blues; white text) from ice cover (darker blues; yellow text) and sleet (medium blues; red text), following major winter storm, detailed in this blog post.
Kilauea erupts again
Bill Line
20 Apr 2026 - The main caldera of the Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawaii began erupting periodically in Fall 2025. On March 10, 2026 the 43rd of these eruptions occurred – featuring a 1000 ft high fountain of lava. The volcanic eruption produced a significant ash plume that led Hawai’i Volcanoes National Parkto temporarily close parts of the park and nearby Highway 11, as copious amounts of ash and tephra fell from the sky. The ash plume is clearly visible in the VIIRS Ash RGB. This event was detailed on a VISIT blog post. The image shows the VIIRS Ash RGB, which uses the 8.6 um (M14), 10.8 um (M15), and 12.0 um (M16) spectral channels, while exhibiting a 750-m spatial resolution.
March Image of the Month - Alaska Sea Spray
Bill Line
20 Apr 2026 - On March 9, 2026, a strong blocking ridge over the western Aleutians and deep northerly flow drove a bitterly cold airmass into southwestern Alaska, resulting in widespread, extreme freezing spray. The NWS in Anchorage issued Heavy Freezing Spray Warnings for the region, citing 45-knot winds, 10-foot seas, and rapid vessel ice accumulation rates of up to 4 cm per hour, alongside Cold Weather Advisories for wind chills dropping to 10 below zero.
Forecasters utilized a combination of satellite imagery and in-situ observations to track and verify the event. The GOES-West and VIIRS Sea Spray RGB products (shown in figure) successfully detected the spray in clear-sky coastal waters as a distinct milky cyan-gray signature. Using these tools in tandem provided optimal results: GOES-West offered continuous temporal tracking of the event's evolution, while the higher-resolution VIIRS imagery delivered detailed diagnostic views of the spray's texture and extent at high latitudes. More can be found at the Satellite Liaison Blog
S-NPP CrIS End of Operational Use - 11 February 2026 - The S-NPP CrIS instrument experienced a single event upset on December 23, 2025 at 11:36:40 UTC which rendered the Scene Selection Module (SSM) inoperable. After repeated attempts to recover the SSM, engineers were unable to restore the S-NPP CrIS instrument to an operational state. To date, the SSM remains in an anomalous state. Given that the S-NPP CrIS instrument is operating well beyond its Design Life, and is tertiary within the JPSS Constellation and has no assigned performance or latency Requirements, the Director of the NESDIS Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO) has approved the recommendation to suspend recovery efforts. This decision permanently ends the operational use of the S-NPP CrIS Instrument.
VIIRS Global Annual Surface Type (AST) - 25 September 2025 - The VIIRS Annual Surface Type 2023 product (AST-2023, spatial resolution: 1 km) based on 2024 whole year surface reflectance data is ready for users to download at STAR FTP sites.
NetCDF version / Zip files:- VIIRS-AST-EMC20-GEO
NetCDF / Zip file - VIIRS-AST-IGBP17-GEO
NetCDF - Zip file - VIIRS-AST-IGBP17-SIN
NetCDF - Zip file
Each Zip file contains a *.bin, a *.hdr and a *readme.pdf file. For more information please contact Xiwu Zhan.
JPSS data now available in the cloud - 17 April 2024
JPSS operational data products, training materials, tools, sample
python scripts to read the data are accessible from NOAA Open Data
Dissemination (NODD).
STAR JPSS Monthly Reports
- January 2026, (PDF, 16.65 MB)
- December 2025, (PDF, 15.41 MB)
- November 2025, (PDF, 14.88 MB)
- October 2025 report not available due to federal funding lapse
- September 2025, (PDF, 13.85 MB)
- August 2025, (PDF, 15 MB)
- Report Archive
For more information, please write to Ingrid Guch / Lihang Zhou