Tracking Climate, Wildfires, and Heavy Rains with NOAA's Satellite Technology

July 6, 2012

During June, the U.S. experienced wildfires and extreme high temperatures that often surged beyond 100 degrees. And Tropical Storm Debby slammed the U.S. with swirling winds and up to 20 -25 inches of rain in areas of western and northern Florida. Recent infrared NOAA satellites' pictures and surface observations indicated that Debby was an unorganized tropical cyclone. Leading scientists at NOAA and other experts are seeking to understand these upside down weather conditions that cause heat waves, wildfires, and heavy rains. The instruments aboard NOAA's satellites and monitoring applications on land provide a broad range of climate research and models. Let's take a closer look at some of the instruments and methods that NOAA scientists and other experts use to understand changes in global anomalies and trends.

NOAA's Environmental Satellites

Helping to fight wildfires across the U.S., NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental and Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental satellites, known as GOES and POES respectively, detect and monitor wildfires and provide invaluable information to NOAA's incident meteorologists, decision makers, and first responders on the ground. As wildfires occur, these satellites provide hundreds of images of these blazes, pinpointing their exact location, size and direction. The strength of NOAA's GOES and POES systems lie in their time-series of daily multi-spectral observations, which are used to characterize and monitor the land surface at regional to global scales, making them able to track tropical cyclones, heat waves and other climate anomalies.

Satellites Monitor our Climate

Worldwide, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that May 2012 was the second warmest May since global analysis and record keeping began in 1880. Global-average anomalies are calculated on a monthly and annual time scale. Satellite validation tools (ACHA, CALIOP) and Cloud algorithms (measuring cloud emissivity - cloud optical depth, liquid water path and ice water path) contribute to scientists' capabilities to understand the earth's climate changes. Climate models simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice. These climate models project temperature changes resulting from increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The NCDC's Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly (GHCN-M), first released in 1990 provides monthly temperature data from 226 countries and territories. These ongoing monthly updates support the monitoring of current and evolving climate conditions. These changes in global anomalies and trends require changes in technology and instrumentation.

Data are now flowing from a new generation of instruments onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite, a joint NASA/NOAA mission. The data are being used in NOAA's global numerical weather forecast system seven months after the NPP satellite launch and nearly three times faster than in previous missions.

The Suomi NPP polar-orbiting satellite circles the Earth every 102 minutes, flying 512 miles above the surface, capturing data from the land, oceans and atmosphere. The satellite carries five instruments including the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The ATMS captures atmospheric temperature and water vapor information used to assess the atmosphere and predict weather. VIIRS extends and improves upon a series of previous measurements as well as collects data used to measure cloud and aerosol properties, ocean color, sea and land surface temperature, ice motion and temperature, and fires. This data will help NOAA's scientists untangle climate change anomalies.

Pacific Storms Climatology Products

The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) is the nation's next-generation polar-orbiting satellite system and is the successor to the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Operational Satellite System, which was dissolved in the early 2010. JPSS is expected to launch in 2017. To understand global climate change, Pacific storms climatology products provide access to information to help users learn about the climate-related processes that govern extreme storm events.

Look for the upcoming article in the 2012 fall Bulletin of American Meteorology Society (BAM). NCDC Scientist Michael Kruk served as lead author for an article entitled "Pacific Storms Climatology Products: Understanding Extreme Events." These advances in NOAA satellite technology improve our ability to track heat waves and wildfires and heavy rains.

Global temperature readings show a departure from the long-time average. According to a NOAA climate report earlier this year, the average temperature across the U.S. was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average. As the earth continues to warm over the next century, weather stories will undoubtedly dominate the headlines. From ground level to space, NOAA satellites and products will continue to play a vital role in helping us live with the extreme weather conditions.

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