STAR JPSS Website
MIRS captures Texas flash flooding
Chris Grassotti
28 Aug 2025 - The MiRS product suite includes several atmospheric parameters that are applied in downstream products to support NWS operations. In particular, the Water Vapor Profile product is the only satellite input to the Advected Layer Precipitable Water (ALPW) developed by CIRa, and the TPW) product is an important component of the CIRA blended TPW (bTPW). Both ALPW and bTPW are widely used by NWS forecasters in their operations.
Prior to the devastating flood in Kerr County, TX, NWS/Weather Prediction Center (WPC) issued a Mesoscale Precipitation Discussion and warned of likely flash flooding in central Texas including Kerr County. The discussion mentioned that the ALPW imagery revealed an extremely moist environment with water vapor contributions from both the Gulf of America and tropical eastern Pacific. The extreme precipitation is the result of the combined influence of these two moisture sources. In addition, the MiRS Rain Rate product serves as an input to the NCEP/CPC operational CMORPH global precipitation analysis.
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.
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 Erin intensifies
Bill Line
25 Sep 2025 - In this image of the month, we see Hurricane Erin during rapid intensification in the early morning (pre-dawn) hours of 16 August 2025, shown in S-NPP VIIRS Day Night Band (DNB) Near Constant Contrast (NCC) Imagery
VIIRS see fire and rain
Bill Line
28 Aug 2025 - In this image of the month, provided by the VIIRS Imagery team, we see VIIRS Day Night Band Near Constant Contrast imagery at night of thunderstorms and wildfires over north-central US and adjacent Canada.
OMPS captures Canadian wildfire smoke
Banghua Yan
17 Jul 2025 - The NOAA-21 OMPS Nadir Mapper monitors atmospheric ozone and detects UV-absorbing aerosols and trace gases relevant to air quality, with improved spatial resolution. A machine learning algorithm was developed to visually observe aerosol radiometric features of large wildfires using OMPS NM SDR data above 310 nm, with VIIRS AOD as a reference. Two Canadian wildfires merged and grew to over 240,000 hectares by 27 May 2025, remaining active into June and causing hazardous air quality and evacuations.
The figure shows aerosol features from 27 May to 9 June using NOAA-21 OMPS NM data (10×12 km² at nadir). High values indicate dense smoke aerosols. These results demonstrate NOAA-21’s improved resolution—about 7× finer than NOAA-20—and strong. calibration accuracy.
VIIRS true color imagery complements OMPS data. Overlaying OMPS aerosol features onto VIIRS imagery provides clear, contextual views of wildfire impacts often missed in visible light.
JPSS Surveys LA Wildfires
Tom Atkins
10 Mar 2025 - The combination of a wet 2023 and a very dry fall and winter in 2024 set the stage for explosive wildfires in the Los Angeles area starting on January 7, 2025. Several large wildfires broke out in the Los Angeles metro area destroying nearly 20,000 homes and displacing several hundred thousand residents.These fires were captured by VIIRS as shown in the figure above (from JSTAR Mapper).
GCOM-W1 AMSR2 Retrievals Observe Severe Weather Outbreak over the Chesapeake Bay region
Ken Pryor
10 Apr 2025 - Linear convective storms producing hazardous winds impacted the greater DC area and Chesapeake Bay region on March 5, 2025. Retrievals and image products derived from the GCOM-W1 AMSR2 89 GHz channel detected narrow rain bands that generated severe winds before a cold front passage. Comparison of the polarization-corrected temperature (“PCT”) as calculated from the high-resolution (5 km) 89 GHz channel to the derived microwave (“f”) index that is more sensitive to scattering by large ice particles (i.e., graupel, hail) revealed important microphysical characteristics distinguishing between low and high downburst (thunderstorm-generated straight-line wind) potential. The figure shows the lower PCT and higher microwave index values associated with a rain band that produced a wind gust of 56 knots (64 mph), shortly after 1900 UTC, at Thomas Point Lighthouse in the middle Chesapeake Bay.
VIIRS records several severe weather events in southern Great Plains
Bill Line
29 Apr 2025 - Mid-March was very active in the southern Great Plains region – with a large outbreak of wildfires, blowing dust, and severe thunderstorms. The Bill Line’s Satellite Liaison blog detailed these events in a series of posts showing how VIIRS can be used to forecasters to aid in forecasting these events.
https://satelliteliaisonblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/18/mid-march-2025-active-us-weather-wildfires/
https://satelliteliaisonblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/17/mid-march-2025-active-us-weather-dust/
https://satelliteliaisonblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/19/mid-march-2025-active-us-weather-severe-thunderstorms/
VIIRS captures Ohio River Valley flooding
Jerry Zhan
8 Jul 2025 - Bill Line published a blog post titled “Early April 2025 MS/OH River Valley Flooding”. The post features GOES and VIIRS imagery of the persistent thunderstorms that led to widespread flooding, as well as post event imagery capturing the extent of the flooding. It also highlights examples of how NWS/WPC incorporated satellite imagery into their forecasts.
VIIRS Day Land Cloud RGB Imagery from 1 April 2025 (top) and 7 April 2025 (bottom). Bodies of water appear as dark blue in the imagery. The image on the right shows flooded croplands in the Mississippi Delta, particularly across eastern Arkansas and southeast Missouri, and the swollen surrounding rivers.
Surface Type team analysis of 2025 North American Snow Melt Timing
Jerry Zhan
8 Jul 2025 - The surface type team continues to produce the monthly water product suite, which include estimates of water surface fraction (WSF), snow cover, ice cover, and the fraction of land area not covered by any of the three H2O forms (non-H2O land fraction) for each month. An analysis of the monthly snow cover fraction data of this product suite from March to May shows that the geographic patterns of spring snow cover retreat cut across latitudinal gradients over central North America
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
- 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)
- July 2025, (PDF, 15.94 MB)
- June 2025, (PDF, 17.25 MB)
- Report Archive
For more information, please write to Ingrid Guch / Lihang Zhou