This week NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the first images from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument onboard the GOES-16 satellite. Formerly identified as GOES-R before launch and renamed GOES-16 after entering service, the 6,170-pound Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft was launched atop a ULA Atlas-V 541 booster from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last November, promising to represent a quantum leap in weather-watching capability over its many predecessors.
Having now undergone several months of extensive checkouts and preparations for an expected decade of operational service, GOES-16’s first images are just the beginning of continuous lightning tracking – from 22,300 miles above the earth.
“GLM is a first-of-a-kind capability for lightning monitoring at geostationary orbit,” said Jeff Vanden Beukel, Lockheed Martin GOES-R instruments director. “Seeing individual lightning strikes from 22,300 miles away is an incredible feat, plus we’re monitoring cloud-to-cloud lightning for the first time. All this will give forecasters better data to give people on the ground, at sea and in the air faster severe weather warning.”
GOES-16’s GLM is the first operational lightning mapper ever flown in geostationary orbit, shooting hundreds of images each second to monitor frequency, location and extent of lightning discharges across the Americas, and provides continuous day-and-night measurements of intra-cloud lightning associated with severe storms.
In its first weeks of service alone it has already produced more lightning data than all previous lightning data from space – combined.
In a video released by NOAA on March 6 of the first images from GOES-16’s GLM, lightning illuminates storms developing over southeast Texas on the morning of February 14, 2017. The animation is of GLM lightning events overlaid on Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) cloud imagery, and shows frequent lightning occurring with the convective cells embedded in the severe weather system.
“The green cross indicates the location of Houston, and green dotted lines indicate the Texas coastline. Rendered at 25 frames per second, the animation simulates what your naked eye might see from above the clouds.
GLM perceives the scene at 500 frames per second, and can distinguish the location, intensity and horizontal propagation of individual strokes within each lightning flash. Monitoring the flash rate from convective cells and their extent can help forecasters improve tornado and severe weather forecasts and warnings and their impending threat to the public. At the time of this animation, the storm cell in the center of the frame was reported by the NWS to have spawned one of a number of tornadoes and damaging winds spawned by the storm complex.”
The data for the animation, however, is only preliminary, non-operational data as GOES-16 underwent on-orbit testing, but still very neat to see nonetheless.
A Quantum Leap in Earth Weather Watching
GOES-16 is the first of a series of four next-generation satellites in the GOES-R program, and marks the 17th spacecraft of the GOES series (though only the 16th to successfully achieve orbit when one counts the ill-fated GOES-G). Operated by the United States’ National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS), the multi-spacecraft GOES network is responsible for weather forecasting, storm tracking, and meteorological research from geostationary orbit.
The three-axis-stabilized GOES-16 boasts three times more spectral information, four times higher spatial resolution, five times faster coverage, and significantly enhanced functionality over its predecessors in providing advance warnings of storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and solar-induced events, ranging from geomagnetic storms to Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
Along with the spacecraft’s Earth Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument (for visible and infrared observations of our planet’s weather and climate), it is hoped that the combined data will improve warning times ahead of tornadoes, as well as aiding the development of climatological models, thunderstorm warnings, and improving aviation weather services.
Last week NOAA also released the first images from the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument onboard the satellite, which gives faster warning for solar storms. Just the size of a gym bag, SUVI observes the sun in six extreme ultraviolet channels and compiles full disk images—or complete views of the sun—around the clock. Data from SUVI also provides estimated coronal plasma temperatures and solar emission measurements.
“We built SUVI so it can deliver solar storm warning faster than any other space instrument, plus an upgrade in resolution over current GOES systems,” said Vanden Beukel. “Solar storms can cause blackouts here on Earth and shut down satellites in orbit. Faster warning lets us protect these assets before disaster strikes.”
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