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Next Generation Meteorological Satellites: Capabilities and Quantitative Applications

Meteorological satellites are a critical component of the earth observation system, providing valuable information on phenomena ranging from weather to volcanic eruptions.  In recent years, meteorological satellite capabilities have been significantly upgraded.  For instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) recently deployed new geostationary satellites that produce over 100 billion earth observations each day, which is about 100 times greater than the previous generation of satellites.  Through less than one year in orbit, NOAA’s next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) has already had a significant impact on decision-making, but the very large data volume is challenging to fully exploit.  In this talk, an overview of next generation meteorological satellites, with a focus on the GOES-R series, will be given.  In addition, research efforts aimed at developing computer algorithms for transforming very large satellite data sets, in combination with non-satellite data, into environmental intelligence will be discussed.  The algorithm portion of the talk will be focused on volcanic cloud, severe weather, and fog applications developed by the NOAA, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin.