Hurricane delays urgent launch of new weather satellite

A much anticipated and very much needed new weather satellite, GOES R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) launch has been delayed due to weather.

NOAA was scheduled to launch its newest satellite into space on Nov. 4, but Hurricane Matthew’s brush with Cape Canaveral caused damage to several buildings at the launch site. However, the satellite itself was kept safe from the storm.

The launch date has been pushed to Nov. 16, although that date is still pending United States Air Force approval. The current satellites that meteorologists depend upon for forecasting the weather are at the end of their life cycles and could fail at any time. In fact, GOES East, the satellite that monitors weather across Ohio and the eastern half of the country including the tropics has already failed and been repaired several times. Major outages occurred in 2013 and 2015 when NOAA had to activate an emergency spare satellite to provide coverage while GOES East was reprogrammed. So the launch of this satellite cannot come soon enough especially with the upcoming winter storm season.

NOAA’s new GOES-R satellite will be the biggest leap in weather satellite technology in two decades and will be followed by three additional satellite launches that will keep coverage of our weather through at least the year 2036. This next generation satellite will have six instruments on board, two of which are weather-related. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), developed by Harris Corporation, is the “camera” that looks down on Earth. The pictures it sends back will be clearer and more detailed than what’s created by the current satellites.

The new ABI can scan half the Earth in about five minutes compared to 30 minutes from our current satellites. If forecasters want to focus on an area of severe weather, it can scan that region every 30 seconds. Weather radars can’t even scan faster than once every six minutes.

The other weather instrument, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, will continuously track and transmit all lightning strikes across North America and its surrounding oceans. Developed by Lockheed Martin, it can detect the changes in light on Earth and thus the rate and intensity of lightning in thunderstorms and hurricanes. This data will likely advance weather forecasting and warning time of severe storms once the satellite begins full operation sometime late in 2017.

Eric Elwell is WHIO StormCenter 7 Chief Meteorologist. Contact him at eric.elwell@coxinc.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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