New satellite to help forecasters better track, monitor Arizona wildfires

PHOENIX — The National Weather Service will be able to be able to more easily and reliably forecast wildfires in Arizona, thanks to new satellite imaging data.

The National Weather Service will be able to use the GOES-16 satellite to help monitor wildfires. The satellite has already made news for forecasting recent hurricanes with its Advanced Baseline Imager.

The imager, also known as the ABI, is “much improved for monitoring wildfires,” said Tim Schmit, a satellite research meteorologist with NOAA.

The GOES-16 satellite is the first in a new series of advanced geostationary weather satellites that have been launched into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

In the past, NOAA satellite imagers could only take images periodically, about every 15 to 30 minutes. But for images that are used to forecast hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes and wildfires worldwide, an “awful lot can happen” in that period of time, Schmit said.

But with the ABI, forecasters are able to get images as frequently as every one to five minutes, Schmit said.

“Really, the main thing that GOES gives is this rapid monitoring of fires,” he said, adding that a shift in wind can change the course of a wildfire in just minutes.

The GOES-16 satellite launched last year, but had to go through several stages to get into orbit. Schmit said its data is available for the National Weather Service to use, but the technology is still being fine-tuned.

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