How will the Onset of the New GOES-West Satellite Imager Advance Atmospheric Research?

Journey complete! Today #GOES17 finished drifting to its new orbital position at 137.2 degrees west longitude. In a few days we’ll start seeing the first new images out of Alaska, Hawaii and the Pacific from the satellite’s new home. Learn more: https://t.co/qYZA5D6jve pic.twitter.com/gTilVc0OYu

— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) November 13, 2018

DISCUSSION: As of earlier today, history was made over in the Eastern/Central Pacific Ocean basin. Science researchers from around the world continued to be even more optimistic about the future of atmospheric and climate research. This optimistic and confident sentiment is a direct result of the newest and final position of the GOES-West (formerly GOES-17) satellite imager being declared as having reached its final position in its orbit around planet Earth. This is a truly historic and memorable day in the history of atmospheric science research as well as atmospheric forecasting since this satellite imager now matches up with its sister satellite (i.e., the GOES-East satellite imager) to help monitor and study an even greater portion of North America and beyond the scope of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. This is incredibly meaningful since it allows both forecasters and researchers to get even greater detail than ever before in areas further west than the current GOES-East (or GOES-16) satellite imager viewing window could ever accommodate. Hence, this is a tremendous step forward for the future of advancing science and our ability to better understand both the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's ever-evolving climate system.
 
It goes without saying that the assets and the resources which will be provided by GOES-West will quickly become incredible valuable and precious to the global atmospheric science and climate science community as times moves along. The combined resources from the GOES-East and GOES-West satellite imagers will be immensely powerful in the current and future ability of atmospheric forecasters and researchers alike to make even more timely and accurate predictions and projections for various forecast scenarios across the coverage domains of the respective satellite imagers. Thus, the combined capabilities of these respective satellite imagers will continue to forever change the ways and the resolution at which we will now able to observe and track various atmospheric phenomena over an even larger region than atmospheric science previously was able to. Hence, GOES-West is taking the advanced remote sensing era to even higher heights. 

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© 2018 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz