Featured NewsNovember 4, 2024 NOAA awards $7.6 million for flooding, extreme precipitation preparednessHurricane Helene caused record flooding and damage on September 28, 2024, in Asheville, NC. On October 29, 2024, the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced $7.6 million in funding for cooperative institutes to transform satellite observations into information communities can use to prepare for and recover from floods and heavy precipitation. The awards fund work to create street-level maps of potential flooding and inundation, improve models of how water cycles through the nation’s rivers and streams, and develop a new dataset of hourly-precipitation information to help businesses and communities better understand the effects of extreme rainfall. 
October 23, 2024 Report: Global coral reef bleaching event is largest on recordOngoing 2024 bleaching event impacting 74 coastal countries New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has scientists ringing alarm bells about the health of the world's oceans. 77% of the world's coral reefs have experienced "bleaching-level heat stress" over the last 22 months. Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, joins CBS News to dive deeper into the research. "Currently the world's oceans are hotter than they've ever been in any recorded history." - Derek Manzello, Coral Reef Watch Coordinator 
September 20, 2024 NOAA invest $1.1 million to improve satellite-based flood monitoring in AlaskaAlaska’s ‘unique’ challenges call for better flood forecasting, monitoring data Today the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced a $1.1 million funding opportunity for satellite-based monitoring of floods and ice-jam events in Alaska. These funds are made possible by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in U.S. history. STAR's Sean Helfrich (Water Surface Conditions /SAR Applications Lead) has a leading role in evaluating proposals for this funding opportunity, which will support up to three years of work. 
September 12, 2024 GOES Imagery Tracks FrancineSTAR GOES site is a key storm monitoring resource On September 8, the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) identified a large low pressure disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico. Now, as named storm Francine, the hurricane dumped heavy rainfall and produced dangerous winds on Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. The STAR GOES imagery site produces images that follow the storm position data from the NHC. GOES storm pages are then referenced by both the NHC and by NOAA's Hurricane Francine pages. The GOES Imagery site does this for every NHC-tracked tropical storm in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific regions. 
July 25, 2024 Biden-Harris Administration Advances Wildfire Detection by Expanding Use of SatellitesA collaborative agreement for use of NOAA satellites will help the Interior and Agriculture Departments detect wildfires early, track wildfires in real time, and provide data for public safety and air quality modeling. Supported by a $20 million investment from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law - $10 million each from Interior and Agriculture - this new agreement will use advanced remote sensing capabilities to improve the speed and accuracy of wildfire detection. Agreement signatories: 
April 16, 2024 NOAA Confirms 4th global coral bleaching eventThe world is currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event, the fourth global event on record and the second in the last 10 years. "From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin," said Derek Manzello, Ph.D., NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator. 
February 5, 2024 New Product Shows Promise for Methane Monitoring“The potential for this technique is enormous,” — Shobha Kondragunta, STAR This new geostationary data product has great potential to improve our ability to monitor methane emissions, which are second only to carbon dioxide in warming effects. The technique was introduced in a recent paper by Harvard scientists. 
January 18, 2024 Pavolonis Quoted in Wildfire Detection ArticleArtificial Intelligence (AI) is a force-multiplier in detection efforts Dr. Michael Pavolonis, NESDIS Wildland Fire Program Manager was quoted in an article by Meteorological Technology Today titled “How are drones, satellites and AI models working together to predict fires and save lives?” 
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STAR in the News
Tracking Francine’s Latest PathSeptember 12, 2024 - Bloomberg News reports: Francine is the third named storm to hit the mainland US this year. The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season got off to a quick start, but had stalled in recent weeks before Francine. It has now produced six storms, four of which became hurricanes. STAR's GOES-East geocolor image of the storm is featured. Read more in the Bloomberg News story. 
AI and satellite imaging doing early wildfire detection in ColoradoJuly 30, 2024 - This week the Denver Post reports on a new artificial intelligence program — the Next Generation Fire System — which will help identify wildfires as small as an acre by scanning images taken by weather satellites orbiting about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. NOAA officials say it can process the deluge of data from the satellites — which capture images as frequently as every 30 seconds — and detect heat from fires smaller than a football field. The program then flags potential new fires to a dashboard so humans can check the images and verify the existence of a fire. While humans are great at detecting a new fire from satellite images, they can’t process the firehose of data as quickly and easily as the AI program, said STAR's Mike Pavolonis, NOAA Satellites’ Wildland Fire Program manager. Read more in the Denver Post story. |