One of the many tools for forecasters is satellite data provided by NOAA. The organization gets this data from its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).

The satellites are around 22,000 miles away from Earth, allowing them to orbit the Earth at the same rate that the Earth spins. Each one is built and launched by NASA, and then NOAA operates the satellites and distributes the data. Dan Lindsey is a program scientist for the GOES-R program, the latest series of satellites used by NOAA.

“The goals of the mission were to provide improvements across the board and really earth sensing as well as space weather sensing,” said Lindsey. “Talking first about Earth sensing, the primary instrument on the GOES-R series is called the Advanced Baseline Imager or ABI, and compared to the previous series, it improved the spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution across the board.”

Improvements in resolution have resulted in much smaller clouds being seen by the satellite, features being identified, such as whether a cloud is composed of ice or water, and more frequent images.

“We were taking images, say every 10 minutes, every 15 minutes, and now we can collect images up to every minute,” elaborated Lindsey. “We can literally see things as they’re happening. We can see the storms forming, we can see them getting stronger in real time. So it was really exciting to take that data and learn how to better use it.”

The last satellite of the GOES-R Series launched last June and became operational this month.

RELATED: NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite is now operational

One of the instruments on GOES-19 is called the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, or GLM for short. This will help forecasters identify when a storm first becomes electrified.

“Its job is to keep a constant watch over the hemisphere and look for lightning activity,” said Lindsey. “This is important to get this warning early, and that way we know that the storms are coming in. And if they happen to be moving to a particular area, we can ask people to move to safety.”

Another instrument on GOES-19 is called the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR). This is the first time a CCOR has been in geostationary orbit.

Lindsey says the instrument simulates a total solar eclipse, allowing NOAA to take pictures of the area around the sun called the corona.

“Why that’s important is when we have these coronal mass ejections from the sun, we can take pictures of them, and the forecasters are able to get a vector or the direction and the speed of those coronal mass ejections. Sometimes they go harmlessly out into space, but sometimes they come toward the Earth,” said Lindsey. “If they’re coming toward the Earth, we have to be ready for them. They can use that information to sort of predict, is it gonna arrive in one day, two days, three days, et cetera, and take the appropriate precautions.”

Also known as solar storms, geomagnetic storms can have negative impacts. These can include damage to satellites, harm to astronauts in space, and blackouts of cell phones or power grids on Earth. Geomagnetic storms can also create the Northern Lights.

“I think the better we do with predicting the incoming solar storms, then in turn, the better we’ll do, the better job we’ll do at predicting sort of good nights of when might be a good time to go out and look for the Northern Lights,” said Lindsey.

This year marks 50 years since the launch of GOES-1, and planning is already underway for the next satellites. The next series is expected to launch in the 2030s.