Celebrate Earth Day with amazing GOES-16 views from space
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2017, 7:02 AM - It's Earth Day today, and to celebrate, here are five amazing views of our planet, sent to us by the new GOES-16 weather satellite.
GOES-16 has been up in geostationary orbit above the western hemisphere for months now, sending back images since late January that have been impressive... to say the very least.
We're still months away from this satellite becoming fully operational, when its imagery will actually be used in official forecasting of our day to day weather, but until then, it's still treating us to views of our planet like these:
Full disk animation of Earth from April 7, 2017. Credit: NASA/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State
The day side is full colour from the satellite's Advanced Baseline Imager, and the night side is infrared cloud images from the ABI, overlayed onto a static background, taken by the Suomi NPP satellite, that shows the night lights of Earth.
These global mosaics are beautiful, but GOES-16 can zoom in even closer, and capture images more frequently, to reveal levels of detail rarely seen before from space.
Ice swirls off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, on April 19, 2017. Credit: NASA/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State
The March 15, 2017 Noreaster dumps feet of snow on some parts of the northeast US, while drawing numerous streamers off of the Great Lakes. Credit: NASA/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State
Storms rage across the west Texas plains, near sunset on April 17, 2017. Credit: NASA/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State
Lines of puffy clouds are transformed into giant thunderheads, on April 3, 2017, as they are lofted towards the stratosphere by the convergence of sea breeze winds from the easy and gulf breeze winds from the west. Credit: NASA/NOAA/RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State
These are really just a small sample of what the satellite has shown us, so far. Check out Colorado State University's GOES-16 Loop of the Day page for more animations and movies.
Happy Earth Day!
Source: NASA | Colorado State