CIMSS-NOAA Weekly Report [ Archive ]

CIMSS-NOAA WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING MAY 23, 2025

DATA, INFORMATION, AND USE-INSPIRED SCIENCE:

FUTURE OUTLOOK:

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION:

TRAVEL AND MEETINGS:

Participation by CIMSS, AOS, and CCR at 2025 AMS Denver Summit: Researchers and students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) department, and the Center for Climatic Research (CCR) participated in the 2025 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Denver Summit held 12-16 May in downtown Denver, Colorado. The summit consisted of three conferences on polar meteorology and oceanography, agricultural and forest meteorology, and bio-geosciences, as well as a symposium on fire and forest meteorology. Presented topics included innovative sea ice products, the next generation fire systems, the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE), and surface energy balance (T. Greenwald, CIMSS, 608-263-3629)

International Winds Workshop: This week one talk and one poster were presented to an international audience at the on-line-only 17th International Winds Workshop. Dave Santek gave a talk entitled, "A Review of 3D Wind Activities from Hyperspectral IR Sounders at CIMSS". Dave's coauthors include Dave Stettner, Tim Olander, Agnes Lim, and Jason Otkin. Rich Dworak shared a poster entitled, "Innovative Atmospheric Motion Vector Products from VIIRS." Rich's coauthors include Dave Santek and Dave Stettner from CIMSS and Jaime Daniels from NOAA. (D. Stettner, CIMSS, 608-262-8850)

3D Winds Presentation given at Nowcasting Workshop: A talk entitled “CrIS-based Wind Products” was given remotely by David Santek at the “European Severe Storms Laboratory - European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (ESSL-EUMETSAT) Expert Workshop on Use of MTG-IRS L2 Products for Nowcasting” on 21 May 2025. The presentation covered the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) 3D winds effort at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), with an emphasis on nowcasting applications and future machine learning enhancements to the product generation. (D. Santek, CIMSS, 608-263-7410)

TRAINING AND EDUCATION:

MEDIA INTERACTIONS AND REQUESTS:

SSEC and CIMSS Scientists in the News: NOAA Satellites Wildland Fire Program manager Mike Pavolonis spoke with NOAA for a story featuring the Next Generation Fire System and how it is being used around the country by emergency planners and firefighters. The story also covers details about how the NGFS works and how it uses AI to detect fires rapidly. CIMSS satellite research was featured in a story by University of Wisconsin-Madison News, Beyond the weather forecast: 5 ways UW satellite technology helps save lives. (E. Verbeten, SSEC, 608-263-4206) 

SOCIAL MEDIA AND BLOG Posts:

This week's updates to the CIMSS Satellite Blog: Each week, CIMSS (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies) scientists publish short case studies that highlight noteworthy meteorological events, and that show how satellite imagery helped describe what was happening. This weeks entries included 'Midwest Mayhem', 'Blowing Dust prompts the issuance of the first Dust Storm Warning on record for the Chicago metro area',  'Southeast Supercells', 'Rain Development across the Samoan Islands', 'Viewing the atmosphere around Iceland with JPSS Satellites and Polar2Grid'. (S. Lindstrom, S. Bachmeier, CIMSS; J. Cintineo, NOAA; 608 263 4425) 

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Figure: CSPP Geosphere GOES-19 true-color imagery showing dust plumes over northeastern Illinois, 2330 UTC on 16 May 2025

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Figure: NOAA/CIMSS ProbSevere readout for the tornadic storm that affected Madison, AL, 2334 UTC, 20 May 2025.

PUBLICATIONS:

3D Winds Paper Accepted for Publication: A paper on “Determining Global 3D Winds by Tracking Features in Time Sequences of CrIS Humidity and Ozone Retrievals” by David Santek, Elisabeth Weisz, W. Paul Menzel, and David Stettner has been accepted for publication by the Geophysical Research Letters. Single-field-of-view resolution retrievals from successive overpasses of three Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) instruments on NOAA-21, NOAA-20, and S-NPP are used to derive height-assigned wind profiles with reasonably complete all-latitude (“global”) coverage that compare well with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) wind determinations. These 3D winds include mid-level atmospheric flow, often missing from the infrared window and visible feature tracking. (D. Santek, CIMSS, 608-263-7410, E. Weisz, CIMSS, W.P. Menzel, CIMSS, D. Stettner, CIMSS)

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Figure: CrIS-derived 3D winds, plotted as wind barbs, for 13 September 2023 at 1750 UTC overlaid on a 500 hPa surface of retrieved humidity from NOAA-21 CrIS. The wind barbs are color coded by pressure: 100 to 400 hPa (magenta), 400 to 700 hPa (cyan), below 700 hPa (yellow). Note the locations of low- and mid-level cyclonic winds (yellow oval) in the clear and low cloud regions to the northwest of Hurricane Lee, and the anticyclonic upper-level winds (magenta oval). The hurricane intensity at this time was approximately 95 kts.

OTHER: