What weather imaging is going to look like with the new GOES-R satellite

gfycat.com

34 points·quantisan··6 comments

Video source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9goWgq55xL0

I love weather satellites. Does anyone know how GOES-R compares to Japan's Himawari-8?

Also, looking at what these things can do it makes me wonder what the capabilities of the military/spy-sats are. I guess I'll find out in 30 years or so :)

I worked on a system for the WMO that contains virtually all the weather satellites. The Himawari-8 detail page is here: http://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/167

You can check all the technical details at the World Meteorological Organization here: http://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/152

This will benefit us all through weather prediction/alert apps. They're already somewhat useful, but this could really drive pinpoint accuracy for outdoor events and recreation.

Pinpoint accuracy in the spatial sense isn't what's useful here for weather forecasting - it's the increased resolution for detecting subtle features and the increased frequency for detecting said features more quickly.

This likely won't help improve "will it rain this afternoon at the golf course" forecasts, but it will very likely drive "we detected a thermal couplet on this supercell, let's tornado warn it" type decisions several minutes sooner.

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