Happening Now: NOAA operations in real time

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  Jason-2 and Global Sea_surface Height
  NOAA partners with France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) to operate the Jason-2 satellite mission. Jason-2 uses a radar altimeter instrument to measure global sea surface height to an accuracy of a few centimeters every 10 days, to determine ocean circulation and mean sea level trend, in support of weather forecasting, climate monitoring and operational oceanography. Jason is the only mission that can give NOAA a worldwide view of the ocean’s surface. The image above represents an Interim Geophysical Data Record of Sea Surface Height Anomaly (0.25x0.25 longitude/latitude) .
  Credit: National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)

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  Global and long-term observations
  NOAA uses data from its partner, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to provide global, long-term Earth environmental satellite observations. Their satellites will play an important role in monitoring both global water circulation and climate change plus examine the health of earth from space. Global and long-term observations (10-15 years) by JAXA will contribute to an understanding of water circulation mechanisms and climate change. JAXA has started offering brightness temperature products that complements data from JPSS. NESDIS is working closely with JAXA to process this sophisticated data that enhances NOAA’s spectrum of data that helps us understand our changing planet.
  

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  Northern Hemisphere Coverage
  NOAA’s closest international partner in satellite monitoring is the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Through the Initial Joint Polar System Agreement (IJPS), NOAA and EUMETSAT coordinate to fly polar-orbiting satellites with environmental sensors with similar or identical capabilities in different orbits, and fully share global observations in real-time. This allows NOAA to receive significantly more satellite data than it can provide itself, at little additional cost. This added data provides valuable input to the weather forecast models that allow us to predict severe weather up to seven days into the future.
  Above Image:Meteosat-10 captures the Northern Hemishere..

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  Southern Hemisphere Coverage
  Think about how quickly the weather can change in three hours. Normal satellite coverage over South America would provide imagery only once every three hours when GOES-East captures a full disk image. However, since 2007 NOAA has provided coverage of the Southern Hemisphere using its retired GOES spacecraft. Termed “GOES-South,” the 15-minute imagery gives weather forecasters in South America the data they need to provide more timely weather advisories..