The Weather Notebook: The GOES-8 Satellite

The GOES-8 Satellite
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You probably couldn't tell the difference on your local weather program, but meteorologists certainly noticed when the new generation of geostationary satellites was finally launched on April 13, 1994. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook.

NASA launched the first GOES for NOAA in 1975 and followed it with another in 1977. Currently, the United States is operating GOES-8 and GOES-10, launched in 1997. GOES-9 (which malfunctioned in 1998) is being stored in orbit to replace either GOES-8 or GOES-10, should either fail. NOAASIS.
Dubbed GOES-8 - it's an acronym for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - and used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this satellite quickly endeared itself to forecasters by providing fresher, more flexible and more detailed profiles of the earth's atmosphere.

Like earlier GOES satellites, GOES-8 beams back images of the earth and its ever-changing atmosphere from a fixed position 22,000 miles up in space. But unlike the old GOES which focused on earth only 5% of the time, the new model has an imager trained continuously at our planet. As a result, GOES-8 produces a full-earth image every half-hour, and in just five minutes, it snaps a portrait of the entire US. This is especially useful in getting a jump on rapidly developing regional phenomena like severe storms.

GOES-8, which has since been joined by GOES-9 and 10, is also the first satellite equipped with both an imager and a sounder that can work at the same time. While the imager takes pictures, the sounder profiles temperature and moisture levels down through the atmosphere. Together they give forecasters a stream of information on the movement of winds, moisture and temperature in the clouds. Information that ultimately helps make for a better forecast.

One thing the new GOES cannot do is measure anything underneath cloud. For that, we'll have to wait for laser-based satellites, now in the works.

Thanks to contributing writer David Laskin. Funding for The Weather Notebook comes from Subaru and the National Science Foundation.