A selection of several GOES ABI loops during 2022 and 2023 showcased the diverse range of features observed, which included volcanic ash plumes, hurricanes, convection, fog, smoke, fires, dust and ice.

It’s very hard to choose just one event from every month of the year, but the goal here is to show a variety of phenomena and locations that NOAA‘s GOES ABI routinely monitors, in this case during 2024. Most loops generated are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison CIMSS Satellite Blog, which is linked to in the titles at the top of each monthly entry. Imagery from GOES-16 and -18 (and -19) are showcased, along with the ABI’s sectors: Full Disk (10-min intervals), Contiguous U.S. (5-min intervals) and Mesoscale sectors (30-sec to 1-min intervals).

January Single-banded snow squall along the length of Lake Michigan

The meso-vortices were also well forecast and observed by radar.

February The Smokehouse Creek Fire

GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB over north Texas 15:06 UTC 27 February 2024 – 03:31 UTC 28 February 2024 as shown in AWIPS

The above animation (and as an animated gif).

March SpaceX Starship Test Flight 3

Note that each of the ABI spectral bands could see a signal of the SpaceX launch.

Bonus material: A SUVI Animation when the Sun was being eclipsed.

The sun eclipsed by the moon as seen in a mp4 animation. Near realtime SUVI images: SSEC and SWPC.

April Time Composite Imagery of the Total Solar Eclipse

The Moon’s shadow during the total solar eclipse was observed by many ABI spectral bands.

Bonus material: 1-min meso-sector (with 5-min CONUS sectors) of an enhanced ABI band 3 (0.86 um) following the shadow:

May Hail swath across the Texas Panhandle Plains

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Nighttime Microphysics RGB images showed a thunderstorm that moved southeast from the New Mexico / Texas border across the southern Texas Panhandle Plains on 29 May 2024. A narrow northwest-to-southeast oriented hail swath produced by this storm  — from south of Clovis, New Mexico to south of Lubbock, Texas — showed up as pale shades of beige. The Land Surface Temperature derived product showed cooling in the region of more than 10F.

Bonus material: River valley fog in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa

Similar to the long forgotten fog in many river valleys in BAMS (1989) observed by GOES-7, GOES-16 showed narrow tendrils of river valley fog — along a portion of the Mississippi River and a few of its tributaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. The derived fog and low stratus product also monitored the fog, while showing the need for improved spatial resolutions.

June GOES-U Rocket Launch

The GOES-U rocket launch was monitored by both GOES-18 ABI (30-sec) and GOES-16 (1-min), these were research meso-scale sector requests. Note that not only was the launch and rocket separation seen, but also the booster rockets re-burn when returning to land at the Kennedy Space Center! GOES-U became GOES-19 after successfully reaching geostationary orbit.

Bonus material: Haboob in New Mexico

Double Bonus: SUVI (Solar) Imagery

July Hurricane Beryl in the central Caribbean as a Category 5 storm

The earliest Cat 5 Atlantic basin hurricane as seen with 1-min GOES-16 imagery.

Bonus material: Meso-scale vortices seen in the ABI high resolution visible band.

August Tornado in Buffalo New York

The storms associated with a weak tornado (at 16:49 UTC) in Buffalo New York were monitored by GOES. The cloud phase RGB is shown, demonstrating the glaciation of the clouds.

Bonus – Gravity waves in the Midwest.

September Early (Preliminary / Non-operational) GOES-19 Imagery

During September, GOES-19 ABI continued to collect imagery from it’s location at approximately 90W and the equator. The ABI has 2 visible, 4 near-IR (or near-visible) and 10 IR bands.

Bonus – Meso scale imagery of Helene.

October Annular Eclipse Shadow in the Southern Hemisphere

On October 2, 2024 several of the geostationary imagers observed the Moon’s shadow in the Southern Hemisphere. An example from the ABI on GOES-19 is below. A CIMSS true color loop doesn’t create the artificial colors that can happen in Raleigh-corrected composite imagery.

November Prolonged eruptive period of Popocatépetl in Mexico

A prolonged eruptive period of Popocatépetl occurred during 22 October – 4 November 2024. Ash RGB images showed the periodic pulses of ash from Popocatépetl.

A number of derived products, such as a radiometrically-retrieved Ash Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site showed that the volcanic plume occasionally reached altitudes of 12 km or greater.

Bonus – Power Plant Plume Produces Precipitation

According to S. Bachmeier, CIMSS “The Nighttime Microphysics RGB (not shown) did a good job of highlighting the industrial plume — then after sunrise, True Color RGB imagery showed that the plume seeded the cloud layer enough to cause it to dissipate as it produced the snowfall (sort of like the aircraft-induced “fall streak” effect).”

December Combined GOES West and East IR images

While the animation below does not start in the month of December, it does end in that month. This is a combined GOES-West and East ABI band 13 composite image, in a Mollweide projection. This loop shows hourly data, as does this near realtime web page.

Similar animations as above, from June 1 to December 13, but with playback durations of 1 and 2 minutes. The location of 7-day (hourly) animations for a few of the ABI bands.

H/T

Thanks to all who make the GOES imagery possible, the ingest and software to display the imagery (including, but not limited to McIDAS-X, geo2grid, geosphere, Real Earth and AWIPS) and all who generated CIMSS Satellite Blog entries, especially Scott Lindstrom and Scott Bachmeier. Special thanks to Mat Gunshor and Jim Nelson of the UW/CIMSS AWG Imagery Team. T. Schmit works for NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, is stationed in Madison, WI, and will be retiring from federal service at the end of 2024.

A similar ‘Year in Review’ for 2021; 2022 by NOAA Satellites.

Also, some “top 25” GOES-16 and GOES-17 ABI loops. Also see the Satellite Liaison Blog.

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