Satellite View of the Americas on Earth Day
Today, April 22, 2014 is Earth Day, and what better way to celebrate than
taking a look at our home planet from space.
NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured this stunning view of the Americas on
Earth Day, April 22, 2014 at 11:45 UTC/7:45 a.m. EDT. The data from GOES-East
was made into an image by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
In North America, clouds associated with a cold front stretch from Montreal,
Canada, south through the Tennessee Valley, and southwest to southern Texas
bringing rain east of the front today. A low pressure area in the Pacific
Northwest is expected to bring rainfall in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, stretching
into the upper Midwest, according to NOAA's National Weather Service. That low
is also expected to bring precipitation north into the provinces of British
Columbia and Alberta, Canada. Another Pacific low is moving over southern Nevada
and the National Weather Service expects rain from that system to fall in
central California, Nevada, and northern Utah.
Near the equator, GOES imagery shows a line of pop up thunderstorms. Those
thunderstorms are associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The
ITCZ encircles the Earth near the equator.
In South America, convective (rapidly rising air that condenses and forms
clouds) thunderstorms pepper Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
Paraguay and northwestern and southeastern Brazil.
GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for
intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite
is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows
GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing
stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric
"triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail
storms and hurricanes.
For more information about GOES
satellites,
visit: www.goes.noaa.gov/
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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