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If you have been around our website, you are already familiar with satellites and how they capture information given by our planet, in the format of waves. Every part of Earth’s surface emits and/or absorbs waves, and different sensors are used to interpret that information and transform it into images – that’s what we call remote sensing. Now that we reviewed that, it’s just natural to ask an important question: how do we use images and data from the present and past to guess what’s going to happen in the future? The articles below will hopefully help you to understand important topics involving forecast – and maybe in the end you will even want to explore our additional resources to become a weather wiz yourself!
First and foremost, it’s important to understand that weather forecast is never 100% accurate; it’s not like meteorologists and other scientists have a time machine that allows them to observe if a blizzard will hit your neighborhood at an exact time and location – at least not yet! Instead, scientists use very complex computer models to go through a lot of data in a very short period of time. That data comes not just from polar and geostationary satellites, but also deep space satellites placed even farther away. Even simple instruments like buoys in ocean’s surfaces and anemometers – which is somewhat like a windmill – help scientists to tell us when to take that extra coat or an umbrella when we leave for the day!
All that data is collected by and/or arrives at supercomputers in weather stations – big or small building strategically mounted in places around the globe. Those computers are like your brain – the computer of computers! If you are into fantasy football, for example, your brain will use information from past seasons and the present time – such as players statistics, team’s history, and etc. – to try and foresee who is the MVP of the season or which two teams will be playing at the Super Bowl.
Maybe you are not into sports, but perhaps like mystery TV shows or books; you know when you try to decipher the big mystery based on small clues that may be given to you throughout the whole story? That’s similar! Our brain tries to use information such as a character’s behavior and history to guess if they are guilty of a crime, for example, just like computers read atmospheric information to try and guess the weather for the next days. The more data you have, the higher are the chances the guess is correct. And our computers can receive and interpret BILLIONS of numbers and data, and the more we advance technologically, the better we become at foreseeing the weather. Of course, very trained personnel are also needed to fix any errors or help to explain any anomaly, or unexpected trends, brought up by the models – humans are still very needed in the weather forecast!
Another important aspect of weather forecast precision is how far ahead you are trying to predict the weather. You probably guessed the trend: the closer you are to the day of your forecast, the most accurate that will be. This is because atmospheric conditions might change rapidly, so the models the computers use are more accurate for real-time weather, and the farthest you are from real-time, more error accumulates from a computer’s calculations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) shows a 90% chance of accuracy for a 5-day forecast; two extra days for a forecast will lower that accuracy to 80%. If you are trying to foresee the weather 10 days in advance, that drop is even larger: you will only have a 50% chance of getting accurate predictions! That’s why any longer than that, and we will be really out of luck.
The short answer is YES! As you might have learned from previous articles, a TV forecast – which is the result of predictions made by supercomputers and experts in weather stations – can be up to 90% accurate. Yeah, that means there’s still a 10% chance of failed predictions – and the farthest in the future you try to predict the weather, the higher are the chances of having no accuracy at all. However, 90% accuracy is very high when it comes to “predicting the future”, don’t you think?
Another important point that needs to be explored is the difference between deterministic and probabilistic forecasts. Those are big words, but not so hard to understand: deterministic forecast relates cause and effect to predict exactly what the weather will be. As you can imagine, that is not just a great way to give a forecast for the simple reason we don’t have that level of accuracy yet, unless the weather person is predicting the weather for the next seconds. That’s the reason why, now, we hardly ever have forecasts saying we will see rain tomorrow. Instead, they use the probabilistic forecast to say there is a 90% chance of rain, for example. That way, the receiver of that forecast is aware of the chance of rain.
Many times, a TV meteorologist gets your weather forecast wrong – and the reason for that is not just because their models have at least a 10% chance to fail. In fact, there are many other variables that affect TV predictions. For example, you might have heard on TV we would have very high chances of raining tomorrow in Denver, Colorado. When tomorrow comes, the sun might be shining bright all day, and you get mad at the TV forecast because you got your umbrella out of the closet for nothing! While that might be frustrating for some, we need to understand that Denver – and any other city you live – is probably very large, and it probably did rain somewhere in that whole area that we call Denver. So, next time you are watching TV for the forecast, you might have to be a little forgiving with the local weather person; predicting the exact weather at your exact location is not something we normally see in TV forecast, because those professionals normally cover a very large area when reporting their predictions.
Because weather forecast heavily depends on the technology available, it is natural that with advances in satellite technology and computational methods, we become better to predict atmospheric changes. If you are wondering if one day our technology will be so advanced that our forecast will be 100% accurate, it might disappoint you to learn that, no, that probably won’t happen anytime soon – unless, of course, we invent that time machine that allows us to peek in the future to see if it’s raining tomorrow!
When delivering a forecast on a communication outlet, we hear a lot about the chances of precipitation – that is, the chances of water falling from the sky. But did you know that we have many different types of forecast? The list below is some of the important ways different people and industries use the forecast to be better prepared for future weather.
First things first: do you know what is a satellite? Lots of people think about sci-fi movies or NASA as soon as they hear the world satellite. By definition, satellites are much simpler to understand: any object with some mass orbiting – that is, within the orbit of – another object with mass is a satellite. That’s why we say the Moon is a satellite of the Earth. Now answer this: is Earth a satellite? The answer is yes! Because our blue planet orbits the Sun, it is also a satellite of the sun – just like all the other planets in our solar system have their own satellites, or moons, and are also satellites of the Sun.
Now that we know what satellites are, let’s talk about the two different categories of satellites: natural and artificial. Our moon is a natural satellite of Earth – that is, nobody purposely put the Moon where it is; it happened naturally, throughout a long period of time. You probably guessed the second category: artificial satellites, those who involve a lot of work by scientists and engineers, who after a lot of testing and calculations launched a man-made object into space, and that object are up there in Earth’s orbit. That object is what you probably think of when picturing a satellite: some metal shape at the center of a few shiny solar panels. However, even the International Space Station (ISS) is an important artificial satellite that also performs principal research about space.
The impressive International Space Station, a VERY large artificial satellite on Earth’s orbit. Credit: NASA
Artificial satellites are very important for us to forecast the weather or try to understand why, for example, hurricanes move the way they move. Satellites sense things like light to give us important information about our atmosphere – all the gaseous space surrounding Earth, where the weather “happens.” That information can be temperature, clouds’ height, wind direction, and even the composition of the air we breathe in every day. Do you want to how do satellites capture all that? Then keep reading the next article, “How they ‘see’”.
Think about your five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Those five are extremely important for you to understand the world around you. For example, if you grab a bowl of soup and you sense a lot of warmth coming from it, you most likely will try to blow on it a little before putting it in your mouth, right? You just used information given by your sense of touch to prevent a bad burn. Perhaps you even saw a bit of vapor coming out of that soup and that’s what told you the liquid was still too hot to be eaten. That’s your sight helping you to prevent that burn! Your body has billions of sensors to give you important information about your surroundings at all times – just like satellites from far away will use artificial sensors to capture atmospheric information and provide us with tons of really useful information.
There are currently 2,666 artificial satellites orbiting Earth – that’s right, we have thousands of objects up there in Earth’s orbit transmitting information 24/7 to governments and organizations all around the globe. Throughout history, more than 9,000 satellites were launched! Those satellites carry all sorts of sensors – it would take us a very long time to talk about them all, and by the time we finished, we probably would have new satellites to talk about; just last year, 95 new satellites were launched from Earth.
So how about we learn a little more about the satellites we use here at CIRA? The information we receive from space comes from two types of satellites: polar and geostationary satellites. The names may help you to guess their major difference; polar satellites move “from pole to pole,” in the directions we understand as south and north, and they give us images from the entire globe, sensing each point of the planet twice a day. Geostationary satellites, on the other hand, are important because they are designed to follow the Earth’s rotation; this means they sense the information of the spot they are meant to observe at all times. Here at CIRA, we watch very closely the information captured by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), a series of satellites created to watch over the western hemisphere of our globe and give us important information about winds and clouds that help us to prepare for hurricanes and wildfires – amongst many other functions!
At CIRA, we process information from two types of satellites: polar and stationary. The most important difference between those types is their planned orbit. As you may know, when a satellite is launched, very important calculations are made by scientists and engineer to ensure the object remains rotating at an exact, planned speed, path and distance from Earth. And those three characteristics give us very different data to study. Below you can find more about each type; check the comparison table below for a summary of the differences between polar and geostationary satellites.
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Polar:
Polar satellites are given this name because they are designed to move “from pole to pole,” in the directions we understand as south and north, and they give us images from the entire globe, sensing each point of the planet at least twice a day – one at daytime, one at nighttime, sometimes more depending on how geographically close to the pole a location is. It takes the polar satellites we use 12 hours for a full rotation around the planet, and they are positioned in Earth’s polar axis at a distance much closer to our surface compared to geostationary satellites – about 530 miles or 850 kilometers away. To give you an idea, that’s about the equivalent of a roundtrip from New York City to Washington D.C. or a roundtrip from the north frontier to the south frontier of Colorado! [ADD POLAR SATELLITE ANIMATION]
The orbit and distance of a polar satellite to Earth makes them very good to capture information on global climate patterns and cycles, once the information is of the entire globe and fairly frequent. For example, a scientist researching a slow-evolving event – such as melting of the polar ice caps – can create a model that will put together those images generated twice a day and create a very good model to foresee how much of the fresh water in the poles are being melted into the ocean over the years.
Geostationary:
The 1950s
You may have heard about the Cold War, an important historic moment when the United States and the extinct Soviet Union (URSS) battled against each other not using tanks and guns, but propaganda and threats – hence, they are “cold.” A big part of that was the Space Race – when both countries heavily invested in technology to “conquer” space first. While the soviets managed to put the first satellite into Earth’s orbit in 1950, the US solidified its presence in the late 1950s with a series of successful satellites launched – the beginning of our history of using remote sensing to help us understand better the planet we live in.
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While all clouds are made out of water in different physical states – liquid droplets, vapor, or ice crystals – the way those water particles arrange themselves can vary greatly. Many factors influence that arrangement: temperature, altitude, presence of other particles, winds… because of that, we can use information about cloud shapes to create models to get information about the weather – which some meteorologists actually do to help you pick your outfit in the morning. While looking into satellite images over time helps professionals to predict the weather, any person can obtain good information just by looking at the sky with a naked eye. The topics below will hopefully help you to get familiar with some of the basics of clouds watching.
The four basic types of clouds are strato, cirro, cumulo, and nimbo – all Latin terms that will help you remember the clouds’ forms, once those generally describe a specific shape.
It is very common to combine those four core types to describe more complex cloud formations. If you want to explore those types, check the chart provided by the National Weather Service, and if you want to become a cloud observer, don’t forget to check all the cloud resources The Bolt grouped for you.
Click on the image above to open the classification chart by the NWS; when the chart opens, click over the individual cloud pictures to learn more about each one of the different formations
While we normally hear the weather forecast speaking of the low, medium, and high clouds, where you are on the planet is also important to make that classification. Before we tell you about cloud heights, let’s talk about tropical, temperate, and polar regions. Those regions influence determine where the tropopause occurs – that is, the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, or “the limit” where cloud formation stops. The state of Colorado and the continental US are nearly always within the temperate zone, as you can see in the picture below.
Now, let’s take a look at the second picture, created by the National Weather Service; as you can see, in the temperate zone we have low clouds up to 6,500 ft – which is the same for all regions. However, the medium clouds are found between 6,500 ft and 16,500 ft, a mixed zone between 16,500 ft and 23,000 ft – where we won’t normally see smaller cloud formations. For last, we see that high clouds can go all the way to 45,000 ft in the temperate zone – much different from the tropical and polar regions.
For perspective, the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai – is 2,717 ft, well below the medium-height clouds, so those impressive pictures of buildings going “over the cloud line” show only low-clouds. But you can still be as high as the highest clouds: most commercial airplanes will fly up to 45,000 ft – that is, even above most of the highest clouds! That’s why, from an airplane window, you may see a completely clear sky at one point of your trip. Mount Albert, the tallest summit of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, is almost as tall as the highest clouds.
The Burj Khalifa amongst clouds; in Dubai, the building is the tallest one on Earth
Some cloud formations are very distinct in their shape, and sometimes are even hard to be seen. The list below brings some of those formations and why they look the way they do.
Mammatus clouds after intense storms in Texas. Credit: Matt Roberts
Shelf cloud with a defined front gust formed during thunderstorms in the Netherlands. Credit: John Kerstholt
A rare formation, this roll cloud was photographed over the coast of Uruguay. Credit: Daniela Mirner Eberl
Lenticularis cloud formation. Credit: UCAR
Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds over the Rocky Mountains. Credit: UCAR
Noctilucent cloud over the north of Estonia. Credits: Ireen Trummer
Now that you learned a lot about clouds shapes and heights, it would be natural if you started asking yourself how such a variety of clouds might show up in satellite imagery. Do you think they look different depending on how high they are? What about the shapes: if a cirrus cloud looks very different from a nimbus from the ground, will satellites show those important differences?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a yes or no! This is because satellite imagery can give you information on clouds’ shape and height, but those are much trickier to catch. While some differences might be easy to see – such cloud formations around big hurricanes – smaller shapes are much harder to distinct for an untrained eye.
A GOES-R satellite image of Hurricane Katrina over the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: GOES-R/NASA
Think about it like this: visualize a big, green forest you have seen in the past. Can you tell the different types of leaves or even the different trees apart from far away? Probably not. But what if you walk all the way to that tree? You may not be able to tell the tree’s species, but you probably can tell the shape of a eucalyptus tree from an aspen one. That’s a little bit like the satellite imagery. An experienced botanist, who is very familiar with all sorts of trees, most likely can tell the difference between those trees even from far away, sometimes using context information, like geography or altitude, once those trees may not grow under the same conditions. In the same way, a meteorologist who may work daily with satellite imagery can use contextual information, such as region and winds, to identify clouds even from above.
Whether you are a quick, fun-facts lover or getting some cloud-related schoolwork done, or even trying to understand deeper everything about clouds, use the resources below to complement your learning process!
The list below is for those who want to have a deeper understanding of clouds! The links will take you to credible sources related to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – a federal organization that is also one of the partners of CIRA.
SciJinks: Want to learn about cloud topics in a more informal way? This is your place! Similarly to The Bolt, SciJinks has hundreds of articles, videos, and experiments to help you learn about clouds in an immersive way.
Clouds from The National Weather Service (NWS): A very structured, directed way to deepen your knowledge on clouds. The articles are sequential, so you never move to a new topic without understanding the previous one!
Just type the name as written below in your app store and look for the matching logo.
GLOBE Observer: Connected to a citizen scientist program, this app offers a chance to interact with the GOES-R satellite and compare your own sky observations with the satellite images. For example, you can add a detailed live entry from your location, and within 48 hours you will get an email telling you how correct you were, and satellite images of your exact location. A great way to practice your weather observations and be part of a real scientific program! Free, available to iOS and Android.
Cloud-a-Day: Don’t want to be part of a bigger project yet? No problem! This app is for the occasional cloud spotter. For each cloud type, you can read very detailed information like height and precipitation probability, and also compare to other cloud types. After registration, you can start creating your own gallery of cloud pictures. Free, available to iOS and Android.
Field Guide to Clouds: Simple and lighter app to help you identify the clouds you observe from the ground, what kind of weather they may bring, and tons of fun facts about clouds. Free, available to iOS and Android.
Email: thebolt.CIRA@gmail.com
Phone: 970-491-8689
Fax: 970-491-8241
Mail Address: The Bolt/Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University, 1375 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1375
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Bernadette Connel, Ph.D.: Senior Research Associate/Consultant
BSc in Forest Management and Biometrics from Colorado State University (1982), MS (1988) in Natural Resources – Air Environment from CSU, and Ph.D. (1997) in Natural Resources – Plant and Boundary Layer Environment from the University of Connecticut. Currently works on national and international satellite focused training efforts. There are many wonderful satellite products that help us explore, evaluate, and predict the weather of our environment, and Dr. Connell dedicates her efforts to make sure the forecasters, managers, and decision-makers know about them and how to use them optimally. In 2020, Dr. Connell decided to create The Bolt to also help and engage anyone and everyone interested in learning about the weather, independently of their age or backgrounds.
Erin Sanders: Research Associate II/Webmaster
Camila (Silva Monroe) Podominick: Undergraduate Research Fellow/Science Writer
BSc in Communication and Journalism from the Universidade Metodista de Sao Paulo (2011), currently in her senior year of the Chemical and Biological Engineering undergraduate program at Colorado State University (Spring of 2021). Camila also obtained a minor in Technical and Science Communication from Colorado State University (2020) and an AAS in Chemistry from Arapahoe Community College (2018). Camila was invited to write the articles for The Bolt as part of CIRA’s Undergraduate Fellowship Program during the summer of 2020. At the time, she also had no background in satellite imagery and weather forecast, and part of her job is to share her learning process with others who, like her, are curious to learn about the weather, but are not sure how to start.
“Serve as a point of access to any individual interested in learning about weather, who may or may not have a science or technical background.”
The Bolt is humbled to be CIRA’s channel to help and engage the general population – students, parents, and any other science enthusiast – to learn about weather and satellites in a more casual environment. Don’t understand a subject? Have more questions about a topic we presented here? Contact us and we will always try our best to answer your questions and requests.
Welcome to The Bolt! We all benefit from learning about the weather – in small ways, like knowing how to dress in the morning, or big ways, like foreseeing and being prepared for hurricanes!
Looking at satellite images and trying to understand the weather can be intimidating for many people – so CIRA created The Bolt.
We exist to help you to learn about weather-related topics in a simple and quick way – no background or experience required! 🙂
