Each year, the arrival of spring brings the increasing probability for severe weather to the United States. From their orbits, NOAA satellites play a vital role in detecting and tracking severe weather by providing forecasters with critical data to predict and monitor life-threatening conditions.
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) enable continuous coverage of severe weather threats in the U.S., while the polar-orbiting Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites deliver higher resolution global observations for long-term forecasting. Together, these advanced satellites help safeguard lives and property.
GOES
NOAA’s GOES-R Series is the most advanced weather-observing system in the Western Hemisphere. Orbiting at an altitude of approximately 22,300 miles up, GOES East (GOES-16) and GOES West (GOES-18) show near real-time views of developing storms over the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa across the Americas and much of the Pacific. Their data helps forecasters issue earlier warnings to protect lives and property.
Because GOES satellites stay above a fixed spot on the surface, they keep a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions, such as severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, large hail and flash floods. When these conditions develop, the GOES satellites are able to monitor storm development and track their movements.
Monitoring and Tracking Severe Storms in Near Real-Time
GOES satellites each carry an instrument called the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). It provides three times more detail about cloud properties and atmospheric conditions that lead to severe weather than older satellites. The ABI can detect storm features like overshooting tops, gravity waves and above-anvil cirrus plumes (AACP)—signs that a storm may be severe. With rapid updates of a targeted area as often as every 30 seconds, forecasters can track fast-changing storms in near real-time.
Severe storms can also produce tornadoes. Although satellites can’t see tornadoes from space, by tracking cloud motion and lightning, they deliver crucial data that helps meteorologists identify storms with the potential to spawn tornadoes.
Satellite imagery via NOAA's GOES East (GOES-16) satellite showing tornadic storms erupting over Oklahoma on April 19, 2023. This type of imagery combines Visible and Infrared bands.
Lightning Detection
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) continuously monitors lightning activity across the Americas and surrounding ocean regions, capturing both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground flashes. As the first instrument of its kind in geostationary orbit, it has revolutionized lightning detection. By identifying rapid increases in lightning activity, GLM aids forecasters in issuing early warnings of intensifying storms, improving public safety.
Estimating Rainfall
The ABI instrument can help estimate rainfall rates during thunderstorms or flash flooding events. ABI data can determine cloud temperature information that is fed into an algorithm that generates estimates of the rainfall rate over a location. This precipitation estimation can then be used by forecasters and hydrologists in forecasting flooding and flash flooding.
ProbSevere
Scientists are using NOAA’s GOES satellites as part of a machine-learning model called ProbSevere. ProbSevere utilizes Numerical Weather Prediction, GOES, NWS radar and ground-based lightning data to estimate the probability that a developing thunderstorm will produce severe weather up to 90 minutes in the future. ProbSevere has been shown to add 14 minutes of additional lead-time compared to traditional radar-only methods.
A companion AI tool, LightningCast, predicts where lightning is likely to occur, often before precipitation forms, giving people critical advance notice to seek shelter. It also identifies lingering lightning threats in storms with intermittent activity and helps assess when the danger is diminishing. By detecting clear predictive signals ahead of weather radar, LightningCast can accurately forecast lightning up to 60 minutes before the first observed flash.
JPSS
In addition to data from NOAA’s geostationary satellites, NOAA’s Joint Polar-Orbiting Satellite System (JPSS) plays a key role in monitoring and predicting severe weather. The JPSS constellation currently includes the NOAA-20, NOAA-21, and the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellites.
JPSS satellites circle the Earth from pole to pole 14 times daily at an altitude of approximately 512 miles up, ensuring full global coverage twice a day.
Severe Weather Forecasts
NOAA’s JPSS satellites deliver crucial data for numerical weather models, which produce 3-to 7-day forecasts for severe weather events. Around 85% of the data that goes into forecast models comes from polar-orbiting satellites, whose instruments measure temperature and water vapor throughout the atmosphere.
JPSS satellites each carry two advanced satellite instruments called the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), to collect critical weather information from the various levels of the atmosphere, which are fed into numerical weather models along with polar wind measurements from low earth orbit. These improve the accuracy of the boundary conditions of the models, which in turn, improve the quality of forecasts for severe and hazardous weather events.
This data is also fed into NOAA’s Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS), an operational algorithm that processes this information into soundings, or measurements in the form of horizontal slices that make up vertical profiles of atmospheric conditions—such as temperature, moisture, and trace gases.
During the afternoon, when thunderstorms and severe weather often begin to develop, these soundings offer valuable insights into atmospheric conditions, especially in areas where weather balloons (radiosondes) are not regularly launched. These satellite soundings help verify weather models and ensure a detailed picture of temperature and moisture in the atmosphere.
Higher Resolution Imagery
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is another key instrument onboard each of the JPSS satellites. It collects high-resolution visible and infrared imagery of the Earth as the satellites pass by overhead. While the GOES satellites can show a continuous wide-area view of developing weather systems in near real-time, JPSS satellites complement this by offering a closer, more detailed look. Together, these satellite systems give forecasters both a broad perspective and a finer-detailed look needed to track and predict potentially dangerous weather systems more effectively.
Nighttime Imagery
The VIIRS instrument also has a Day/Night band, which is sensitive to very small amounts of visible light over a broad spectrum at night. This means the band can detect everything from moonlight reflecting off clouds or snow, to fires and city lights.
When severe weather impacts a region, the Day/Night Band can be used to get a broad sense of where power outages and potential infrastructure damage are located after the storms. The example below shows the difference before and after Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas.
The NOAA-21 satellite captured imagery of devastating power loss in Texas due to Hurricane Beryl via its Day/Night band. The "before" image was captured on June 9, 2024, and the "after" image was captured on July 9, 2024.
