US launches next-gen weather satellite that will revolutionize forecasting

I think people are accustomed to it and therefore overlook it, but note that government, using taxpayer dollars, delivers the most high-tech systems in the world - not only for meteorology, but also science, medicine and space exploration (as well as military and intelligence). There is a benefit to countries and to the world when the people pool their money for something big.

“This is probably the most complex technology that our species is involved in — weather prediction is,”<p>I think this is just a pattern of people seeing the complexity in their field, but not knowing anything about other fields and thus believing that they are doing the most awesome thing ever.<p>LHC guys will say their technology is the most complex one, Intel, the AI guys, and so on..., not to mention the global infrastructure required to run the Internet.

This is actually pretty cool. I last worked with satellite data from GOES 8 and 9 in &#x27;98. I remember satellite images were sent sent every 3 hours and full disk images were 12 hours. I worked in a weather office where they had one pc running DOS that received the data from Satellite and saved the data where various HP-UX servers manipulated the data.<p>Last i remember, all data transmitted by these satellites are not encrypted, anyone can build a receiver to gather the data to generate satellite images.<p>One day I hope to have time to do this myself.

I like their choice in name: GOES-R.<p>Ghostbusters reference: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net&#x2F;villains&#x2F;images&#x2F;7&#x2F;7f&#x2F;Gozer.jpg&#x2F;revision&#x2F;latest?cb=20140529144058" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net&#x2F;villains&#x2F;images&#x2F;7&#x2F;7f&#x2F;Goz...</a>

Oh boy, what a flurry of buzzwords. Game changer, Breakthrough, revolutionize...<p>All I got from the actual information is a better resolution and faster analysis, nothing that would support the hyping.

This is great. I worked on the ground processing systems for this satellite. I left before my own algorithmic systems went through final review. Was good for me to leave career-wise but I wish I could have seen it through to the end.

When will humanity have enough sensors and computing power to give a similar forecast that Dark Sky provides today, but 7 days in advance? What will that system look like? It seems like it is a mostly matter of time, but I just don&#x27;t grasp what all will need to be done to get there and if it is 15 years out or 100.

I started to depend on the hourly rain, snow prediction data from google&#x2F;weather.com in the last year or so. Especially when planing ski trip.<p>I found them amazingly accurate. Now I know why. I am looking forward the future forecast provided by next gen satellite.

I wish they&#x27;d leave the 100mhz APT signals on these so kids around the country could build their own little &quot;weather stations&quot;... Being able to listen to those (I never had a wideband enough radio to see them) was one of the coolest things.

Enjoy it while you can, as most likely the incoming administration will turn off this satellite. Why spend a lot of money to discover politically inconvenient data? Two birds, one stone.

Great thing to know. Hope it reduces fatalities in the near by countries like Haiti too.

Sure it will.

Would love to read the article, but paywall.

The only thing this will revolutionize, is the alt-right&#x27;s ability to deny more facts that climate change is real :(

Woah, something from the next generation? Someone call the temporal agents and let them know. This is exactly what we faught against in the temporal cold war.