GOES Satellite question?

General Discussion
#1

I have several questions about the GOES satellite that some of the WX guys might have the answer to.

  1. How hot or how long of a duration does the fire need to be for the GOES algorithm to read it as a fire and not filter it out? I have noticed that sometimes fires in brush country(not quick burning grass) don’t make the cut, but someone’s small burn pile will.

  2. what is the status of the new GOES satellite. I saw something in the news a while back that some of it’s sensors were not working properly. Are those the sensors we would want to be using for fire?

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#2

Several links to a lot of heat detection information.
Don’t know how long the GOES will be borked.

https://mappingsupport.com/p/special_maps/
disaster/USA_wildland_fire_tips.html#detection

#3

This is a good article about the GOES-17 issue. I haven’t heard anything since.

GOES-16 has been moved to be the new GOES-East, and is still providing good data, but with a bit of a different view. I have not seen products from GOES-17 (the new GOES West) yet.

Satellite hits from the detection algorithms on MODIS and VIIRS are from different instruments and different satellites. See more information here:
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms-faq

Edit: It looks like they have made some progress, but are still working to isolate and mitigate the problem. And hopefully fix it for the next GOES satellite:

For news direct from the project:
https://www.goes-r.gov/mission/news.html

And if you want to see where the new one is:

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