CIMSS Satellite Blog

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface reports [click to play MP4 animation]

Due to an overlap of GOES-17 (GOES-West) Mesoscale Domain Sectors, images were available at 30-second intervals — and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed the development of thunderstorms over southeastern Oregon, southwestern Idaho and northern Nevada on 29 May 2019. Some of these thunderstorms produced heavy rainfall and small hail in southwestern Idaho, and a cold air funnel was spotted in northern Nevada (local storm reports).

A comparison of Visible images from GOES-17 and GOES-15 images (below) helps to underscore some of the improvements in the GOES-R series of satellites over their predecessors — with images every 30 seconds compared to every 4-15 minutes (with gaps of 30 minutes during the Full Disk scans every 3 hours), the short-term convective trends could be better monitored using GOES-17. Also note that the GOES-15 Visible images do not appear as bright as those from GOES-17 — prior to the GOES-R Series of satellites, the performance of visible detectors degraded over time, leading to imagery that appeared more dim as the Imager instrument aged. Visible detectors on the new ABI instrument benefit from on-orbit calibration to remedy this type of degradation.

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, left) and GOES-15 Visible (0.63 µm, right) images, with hourly plots of surface reports; images are displayed in the native projection of each satellite [click to play MP4 animation]

from CIMSS Satellite Blog http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/33371