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GOES-R
Dave
Jones
Introduction
This article describes a new geostationary
environmental satellite observation system being planned
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
GOES-R is in the planning stages to be the first in a
series of the most advanced environmental observation
satellites dedicated to supporting weather and water,
ecosystems and coasts, climate and commerce. You can think
of the “R” in GOES-R as increased Resolution in all of
the sensors that will be on board. Planned for launch in
2012, GOES-R and
will scan the Earth nearly five times faster than the
current GOES satellites on orbit today. By the way, GOES
is an anacronym for Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellites. The satellites will provide an
increasing user community such as: television
meteorologists, private weather companies, the aviation
and agriculture communities, and national and
international government agencies, with about one hundred
times the amount of data currently provided.
A Nation in Danger
Today, some one hundred million Americans live
along the nation’s coasts, an area at high risk from
natural disasters due to hurricanes, erosion, and
flooding. Two-thirds of the country’s population lives
concentrated within urban areas, which are also vulnerable
to the destructive forces of nature and statistics from
the National Weather Service show the U.S. experiences
more severe weather than any other country in the world.
As urban and coastal populations rise, so too does
America’s vulnerability to severe weather and hazards
related to air quality, water quality, atmospheric
dispersion of dangerous materials, and climatic
variations. With the increased risks and costs, comes the
need for improved and timelier weather forecasts, data,
and storm warnings.
Emergency response plans require real-time
decisions about evacuations affecting thousands of
households in a single incident.
In May 2003 alone, the nation was besieged by more
than 400 tornadoes over seven days in 19 states, killing
40 Americans and doing hundreds of millions of dollars in
damage (see Figure 1). Later in the year forest fires
raged across the West Coast, and Hurricane Isabel severely
impacted the Mid-Atlantic region from the Carolinas
through Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and well into
Canada. In the two previous years nine tropical storms and
one hurricane struck the U.S. causing 54 deaths and $6.3
billion in damage.
The losses described above would have been much
worse if not for accurate and timely forecasts and
warnings issued by the National Weather Service at the
national, regional, and local levels.
As much as one-third of the U.S. economy—$3
trillion is influenced by climate, weather and natural
hazards. In the agricultural businesses alone forecasting
precipitation, drought, frost and seasonal climate
variability determines optimal growing practices and may
afford benefits of $100 million annually.
The energy sector is dependent on forecasts as
well, to determine future regional demand for electricity,
oil, and gas. Additionally, marine and air transport gain
cost savings through routing to avoid weather risks and
delays. Coastal recreation and tourism, one of the
nation’s largest economic drivers with an annual
economic value of about $24 billion, is implicitly
dependent on weather and marine forecasts.
In general, weather information provides market
options that help industries protect themselves
financially against adverse conditions. And in the
military, weather information is regarded as a critical
part of operations and a force multiplier. In order to
have improved weather forecasts, the data gathering
systems must also be improved. These remote sensing data
gathering systems, on the ground, in the water, in the
air, and in space provide the input to sophisticated
numerical weather prediction models. From the standpoint
of these models, good information in equals better
information out.
The GOES System
The impressive imagery of cloud cover produced by
the GOES series, as viewed from orbit high above the
Earth, has become a highlight and staple of television
weather forecasts. Forecasting the approach of severe
storms for more than 25 years, GOES has remained an
essential cornerstone of weather observations and
forecasting.
Above the Equator, at an altitude of 36,000 km
(22,300 miles) two GOES satellites continuously observe,
measure, and report environmental conditions across the
U.S., its coastal regions, and bordering oceans. Hovering
at this altitude, GOES 10 and 12 are the current
satellites in a geostationary orbit; this allows the
satellites to remain constantly over a particular spot on
the Earth’s surface. One satellite is positioned over
the U.S. East Coast (75 degrees West), another over the
West Coast (135 degrees West), thus providing a view of
almost all of North and South America and far out into the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans where the jet streams
transport weather systems around the globe (see Figure 2).
These satellites provide the best means to track
hurricanes across the ocean to landfall, follow severe
storm systems as they move across the U.S. or along the
coasts, and monitor coastal conditions, forest fires, and
atmospheric conditions such as turbulence or volcanic ash
that affect air transportation. Additionally, GOES
satellites monitor solar activity to provide warnings of
severe solar storms that can significantly disrupt
satellites, communications, aviation polar routes, and
even power grids. Other
nations—Europe, China, Japan, and India—also operate
geostationary satellites at longitudes of national
interest providing coverage around the globe.
Since 1974, the GOES program has brought large
benefits to many sectors of the nation’s economy while
helping to protect the lives and properties of Americans.
The present geostationary system is intended to serve
through this decade.
By 2012, GOES-R, is expected to provide continuity
and improved capability through the second and third
decades of the 21st Century. The system is also planned to
fulfill more demanding user requirements with advanced
instruments and a 20-fold increase in vital data
distributed to thousands of users.
To maximize the benefits from GOES-R, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is
developing and integrating requirements and acquisition
strategies for the instruments, spacecraft, ground system,
and data products to ensure an end to end, seamless system
architecture that reduces cost and risk.
Major new innovations in the spatial, temporal, and
spectral resolution of data and image products are
planned, including the capability to:
-
View the whole Western Hemisphere every 15 minutes;
currently we can see the Western Hemisphere every three
hours;
-
View the U.S. every five minutes; currently every
15 minutes;
-
Provide targeted scans every minute simultaneously;
currently cannot be done;
-
Operate well calibrated instruments, suitable for
climate monitoring; current limitations on GOES image
navigation do not allow for significant climate
monitoring;
-
Provide imagery in 16 spectral channels at 0.5-2 km
resolution (see Figure 3); currently 5 spectral bands;
-
Provide high-resolution atmospheric soundings (more
than 1,000 spectral channels) at 10 km resolution; not
currently available;
-
Provide lightning detection continuously over the
hemisphere at 10 km resolution; currently not available
from space;
-
Provide enhanced space weather and solar
information; currently done on a limited basis.
A Better “Eye” on Severe
Weather
With more rapid information updates delivered to
the National Weather Service, GOES-R will provide
information leading to longer lead-times on warnings and
advisories, thus saving lives, property, and reducing
costs.
Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director of the National
Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) says,
“…the key to the use of [GOES-R] data in rapidly
changing situations like severe weather will not only be
the improved data related to the high spectral
instruments, but updating the view more frequently and to
transmitting, receiving, and processing the data more
rapidly...Every minute counts!”
When dealing with hurricanes every minute counts
when forecasters work to determine the strength of these
monster storms. As we enter a period of higher frequency
hurricanes, which could continue through the next couple
of decades, more rapid updates from GOES-R may
significantly improve public warnings and advisories.
Goldenberg and Landsea in 2001 concluded through research
that “the present high level of hurricane activity is
likely to persist for an additional 10 to 40 years. The
shift in climate calls for a reevaluation of preparedness
and mitigation strategies.”
GOES-R Benefits
Major sectors of the U.S. economy will continue to
remain vulnerable to severe weather. GOES-R, however, is
expected to reduce the risks and provide enormous savings.
TRANSPORTATION
According to the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) predictions, the total number of domestic passengers
on U.S. air carriers is expected to increase from 604.1
million in 2000, and grow 3.6 percent per year to 927.4
million passengers in 2012. Weather is responsible for
approximately two-thirds of air carrier delays, a cost of
$4 billion, of which $1.7 billion is avoidable. The GOES-R
advanced sounder will provide better predictions of
thunderstorm development in broad regions of unstable air
allowing better dispatch and routing decisions.
Additionally, GOES-R will provide critical information
that will lead to more accurate and timely warnings of
volcanic ash plumes—a significant aviation hazard (see
Figure 4).
COASTAL
Migration to and development of our coastal regions
is expected to continue. More than one half of all
Americans (53 percent or 148.3 million people) lived in a
coastal county in 2000 (Census 2000 report, Population
Change and Distribution), thus being endangered by storms
and other coastal hazards and stressing shoreline
ecosystems. The ability of GOES-R instrumentation to image
the Continental United States (CONUS) and to target
specific storms at possibly up to 250-meter resolution
simultaneously, combined with improved sea surface
temperature and atmospheric sounding data will result in
greatly improved hurricane intensity and landfall
forecasts reducing risk and evacuation costs.
The GOES-R hyperspectral coastal water imager will
provide the advanced capability to observe ocean color and
ecosystem response as a function of tidal and storm
conditions and supply data to monitor river plumes, red
tides, and ecosystem health. Daily beach health reports
derived in part by satellite may become a reality due to
GOES-R.
AGRICULTURE AND ENERGY
The demand for seasonal to inter-annual climate and
weather forecasts for the energy sector and agricultural
planning continues to increase. GOES-R instruments will
provide hourly, calibrated, high-resolution measurements
of both short and long-term changes in the oceans,
atmosphere, and cryosphere (those portions of the earth
covered in ice). GOES-R will also provide soil moisture
data, which is an essential precursor to drought and
potential flood conditions. Working together with the
National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS),
GOES-R will be the principal observing system for climate
variability.
WEATHER AND WATER
The improved accuracy and resolution of GOES-R
instruments and its associated advanced data processing
and ground system is expected to improve weather analyses,
warnings, and data delivery across the U.S. for severe
storms, supply better data on precipitation and
temperature, and more accurate tracking of lightning.
GOES-R will provide the first ever operational lightning
detection capability from space.
The GEO Lightning Mapper (GLM) is a sensor, capable
of continuously mapping lightning discharges during both
day and night, in a geostationary orbit. The GLM will
provide information to identify growing, active, and
potentially destructive thunderstorms over land as well as
ocean areas. Two primary advantages of the proposed
lightning mapper on GOES over ground based systems, is
that it will be able to detect total lightning flash rate
(cloud to cloud and cloud to ground) rather than just
cloud to ground flashes, and it will be able to detect
lightning over ocean rather than just over land.
SPACE WEATHER
The GOES space weather instruments monitor
conditions on the sun (see Figure 5) and solar effects on
the near-Earth space environment that includes the
magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and upper
atmosphere (Holt and Liu, 2002). The solar observations
can also be used to provide space weather forecasts for
other regions of the solar system, such as the moon and
Mars, where humans and technological systems may someday
be vulnerable to space weather disturbances. Our
Nation’s reliance on the GOES space environment
measurements continues to grow in importance to support a
diverse user community, including industries and the
general public dependent on electric utilities, radio
communications, aircraft flights over polar regions, and
navigation.
About the Author
Dave Jones is Founder, President and CEO of
StormCenter Communications, Inc. He is also President of
the Foundation for Earth Science and sits on the Executive
Committee of the ESIP Federation (esipfed.org).
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