Managed by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, from the United States, the meteorological satellite GOES-10 is used by National Institute for Space Research for the weather forecast. The satellite will be disabled on December first, when will be running out of fuel to keep itself in a right orbital position.
Geostationary, GOES-10 is located at 60W to cover South America completely and to provide images every 15 minutes. GOES-12 satellite, which will replace GOES-10, is located at 75W and will be able to cover South America every 30 minutes. However, NOAA may choose to scan only The United States in case of Tornados, hurricanes or severe thunderstorms in that country. Even under those circumstances, images from South America every 3 hours is guaranteed as far as the agreement with the Worldwide Meteorology Organization is concerned. The images are free.
INPE advises that receipt of the images every 3 hours is sufficient to generate data according to its computational numerical patterns, ensuring the same quality of median and long term output. With images every 3 hours, the impact would be upon the atmosphere monitoring for short term forecast. According to Weather Forecast and Climate Studies Center specialists from INPE, the short term forecast is more subjective and uses of satellite parameters that enable to follow the thunderstorms development, for instance, demanding information in small space of time.
Even if INPE receives images from GOES-12 every 30 minutes as it is supposed to be, the images will have the same quality as they have nowadays, because 30 minutes is sufficient for the rain precise monitoring, among some other parameters studied by the meteorologists.
Although GOES-10 to GOES-12 replacement has demanded a change of both reception antenna and on its processing system and products creation, CPTEC/INPE is prepared for that and will not have any service interruption that has been provided up to now.
The same way in 2007 GOES-10 was dislocated to cover South America having INPE in charge of dissemination data and creation, GOES-12 will be settled from May 2010.
For more information please visit www7.cptec.inpe.br/glossario
Source: INPE