Hurricane Season 2017 - GOES-16

please explain for those of us who are uneducated in the ways of weather....

Is that a new satellite?

Satellites are cool

:ijizzedinmypants:

GOES-16 has several improvements over the old GOES system. Its advanced instruments and data processing provides:

Three times more spectral information
Four times greater spatial resolution
Five times faster coverage
Real-time mapping of total lightning activity
Increased thunderstorm and tornado warning lead time
Improved hurricane track and intensity forecasts
Improved monitoring of solar x-ray flux
Improved monitoring of solar flares and coronal mass ejections
Improved geomagnetic storm forecasting

Break it down us Bay. How will this improve hurricane forecasting?

quote:

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Break it down us Bay. How will this improve hurricane forecasting?

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Most of the benefits you'll see will be some really pretty imagery.

These images will allow better intensity estimates mostly due to the higher resolution.

There will be satellite based atmospheric soundings to get a more complete picture of the environment ahead of the storm. This will help us forecast development and movement with a lot more accuracy.

The satellite also will have lightning detection capabilities. I'm not sure how much better this will be than what we already have... our lightning detection network is a lot better than one would expect... but there are some holes offshore. Lightning, especially around the eyewall, can be an indicator of hurricane development.



what I'm personally most excited about, is that whenever there's a large storm system or a hurricane in the northern hemisphere, under the current satellite system, the rest of the disk is dropped to a 3-hourly satellite image. That's super annoying for me doing my job over South America, and it's not going to happen anymore.

pretty awesome how you can see the fires burning in east Texas and even one of them flickering in the night-times part of the image too.