Twenty Years After Katrina: NOAA Satellite Advancements for Hurricane Forecasts and Tracking

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and coastal Mississippi. It was one of the deadliest hurricanes on record and remains the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was record-breaking, with 27 named storms, 14 hurricanes, and three Category 5 storms. That record remained until 2020, when 30 named storms developed.

Even then, NOAA provided an accurate forecast of Katrina’s track three days in advance. Today, forecasters, local officials and first responders have even better tools to forecast a hurricane’s path, estimate its intensity, and monitor storm conditions in real-time.

NOAA Satellite Technology in 2005

Geostationary Satellites

At the time, NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-12 (GOES-12), operating as GOES East, monitored Hurricane Katrina as it organized into a tropical depression near the Bahamas on Aug. 23, strengthened into the 11th-named storm of the Atlantic season on Aug. 24, and made its first landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the southeastern coast of Florida on Aug. 25. GOES-12 continued to closely track Katrina as it rapidly intensified into a Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf in less than 12 hours on Aug. 28, came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane near Buras, Louisiana, on Aug. 29, and eventually dissipated over the Great Lakes. The GOES satellites orbit 22,236 miles above the equator, at the same speed the Earth rotates, allowing them to constantly monitor a specific area. GOES-12 continuously tracked the storm throughout its lifespan.

One advantage this generation of GOES satellites offered over the previous generation was the ability to temporarily suspend routine scans of the hemisphere and concentrate on a small area of quickly evolving conditions. GOES-12 was able to provide updates on Katrina every five minutes (compared to 30 minutes with previous GOES). 

Another improvement this generation of GOES satellites offered was the ability to gather multiple measurements of weather phenomena using simultaneous imaging and sounding. This information increased the accuracy of forecasts and showed a more comprehensive picture of developing weather systems.

However, GOES satellites at the time had a limitation: they lacked the batteries to capture continuous imagery during satellite eclipses. When the satellites passed through the Earth’s shadow in the weeks around the spring and fall equinoxes, their solar panels couldn’t provide sufficient power. 

As Hurricane Katrina strengthened in the Gulf on Aug. 28, 2005, the GOES-12 imager experienced a two-hour eclipse outage. GOES-12 imagery of the storm before and after the eclipse shows that the storm organized considerably during the time the satellite was unable to capture imagery.

Starting with GOES-13, GOES satellites were equipped with greater battery capacity to eliminate this gap, providing imagery through eclipse periods without interruption. 

Polar-orbiting Satellites

At the time of Hurricane Katrina, satellites from NOAA’s Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) fleet, the predecessors to today’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), also played an important role. Satellites, such as NOAA-16, captured critical observations of the storm as it moved across the southeastern United States. Flying about 520 miles above Earth, POES satellites completed orbits pole-to-pole 14 times a day. 

NOAA retired its NOAA-16 polar orbiting satellite, which operated in low Earth orbit (LEO), after the spacecraft exceeded its expected lifespan by ten years. The POES series, which began in 1978, provided decades of critical observations of Earth’s atmosphere, surface, and oceans. 

Early POES satellites like TIROS-N, NOAA-6, and NOAA-7 carried the original Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument, which provided visible and infrared views of Earth’s surface. Later generations, including NOAA-15 through NOAA-19, added instruments such as the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), which measured atmospheric temperature and moisture, even through clouds and precipitation. These capabilities greatly improved forecasts for hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and other hazards, helping communities prepare for extreme weather.

Each POES satellite was originally designed to last five years, but most far outperformed those expectations. NOAA-16, for example, operated more than a decade beyond its intended lifetime, and the last operational POES satellite, NOAA-15, was only just decommissioned on August 19, 2025, almost 20 years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. The AMSU instruments onboard these satellites directly fed into NOAA’s numerical weather prediction models, advancing 3- to 5-day forecasts and helping to protect lives and property. Building on that legacy, today’s Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) onboard NOAA’s JPSS satellites delivers similar functionality, but with even better performance thanks to technological advancements.
 

Today’s Tools for Forecasting and Monitoring Hurricanes

Geostationary Satellites

Today, NOAA’s geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites continue to work together as a powerful team, and they have even more advanced technology that feeds more sophisticated and accurate forecast models. Today, forecast accuracy has improved so much that a five-day forecast is now better than that of a three-day forecast in 2005.

NOAA’s newest geostationary satellites, called the GOES-R Series, have brought revolutionary improvements to hurricane forecasting and monitoring. They monitor environmental conditions as they happen in high-resolution detail, identifying areas where a storm is likely to form and pinpointing storms as soon as they develop. Once a hurricane forms, the satellites’ Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) gives forecasters and emergency managers real-time situational awareness of what is happening within the storm and where it is headed.

ABI can scan a targeted area as often as every 30 seconds, providing unprecedented real-time monitoring of a storm from space. Rapidly updating imagery helps forecasters better monitor cloud features and more confidently estimate the center of a hurricane. The added confidence in locating a storm’s center of circulation also helps guide reconnaissance aircraft, like NOAA Hurricane Hunters, to the correct location. 

ABI also provides more measurements of the atmosphere than previous GOES imagers. New infrared channels help forecasters better determine the temperature of cloud tops and how fast they are cooling, which aids predictions of rainfall intensity and potential flash flooding associated with hurricane rain bands.

ABI provides much more detailed images than previous GOES. High-resolution imagery helps forecasters more accurately identify storm cloud patterns and analyze the intensity of a hurricane. Improved resolution along with frequent updates enables better wind estimates. More accurate wind data, used in numerical weather prediction models, leads to better hurricane forecasts. 

The newest GOES satellites also carry the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), the first lightning mapper flown in geostationary orbit. GLM aids hurricane analysis and forecasting by clearly conveying convective patterns below the cloud tops. This information helps forecasters assess the structure and evolution of tropical storms. Rapid increases in lightning activity can indicate a hurricane is strengthening.

Polar-orbiting Satellites

Today, NOAA continues the critical mission of collecting weather observations from a polar orbit with its current LEO constellation, JPSS. The first of  five planned satellites launched in 2011, and three are now operational in orbit—NOAA/NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP), NOAA-20, and NOAA-21. Each is equipped with the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and a hyperspectral infrared sounder, the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS). Data from these sounders are used to derive vertical profiles of the atmosphere for assessing atmospheric conditions. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) captures detailed, high-resolution visible (true color) and infrared images of storms, including at night. A fourth baseline instrument, the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS), monitors the concentration of ozone and other aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere.

As a microwave sounder, ATMS is able to see through clouds and precipitation, providing information that visible and infrared sensors cannot, making it a valuable complement to CrIS and VIIRS. CrIS and ATMS data are used to generate three-dimensional profiles of atmospheric temperature, moisture, and pressure. As their capabilities are complementary, they are often used together to enable a more complete picture of Earth’s atmospheric conditions. ATMS and CrIS data also contribute to Total Precipitable Water (TPW) products, which provide an estimate of the total amount of moisture in a vertical column of the atmosphere from the Earth's surface to the top of the atmosphere. TPW data are valuable for tracking hurricane intensity and estimating rainfall potential days in advance. Higher TPW values suggest more moisture is available for rainfall, and can be an indicator of potential heavy precipitation and flooding.

During Hurricane Milton in October 2024, TPW values revealed areas of concentrated atmospheric moisture, helping forecasters monitor the storm’s strength and the potential for heavy rains as it approached land.

In addition, VIIRS captured high-resolution visible and infrared observations of Hurricane Milton, including a striking view of the storm’s eye as a Category 5 hurricane. VIIRS also includes a highly sensitive Day/Night Band, which observes Earth’s surface at night using reflected moonlight. This capability provides continuous monitoring of storms, allowing forecasters to track important changes in a storm’s path that may occur overnight. When combined with model forecasts, these data improve predictions by helping meteorologists recenter storms in their forecast.

The NOAA POES fleet that observed Hurricane Katrina with its AVHRR instrument in 2005 provided imagery at 1 to 4 kilometers (km) resolution in 5 channels. By comparison, JPSS VIIRS delivers imagery at 375 to 750 meters (m) resolution in 22 different channels, which is several times sharper, along with many more channels to observe tropical cyclones. Similarly, the sounders on today’s JPSS satellites represent significant advancements over the instruments carried on the legacy POES series. ATMS and CrIS offer much finer spectral detail, higher spatial resolution, and more channels, compared to their POES counterparts. These advancements in LEO capabilities allow forecasters to observe storms with greater clarity and accuracy than was possible two decades ago.

While satellites can’t prevent hurricanes from affecting communities, NOAA satellite data have dramatically improved over the years, providing forecasters with new and more accurate tools to measure atmospheric conditions, feed increasingly sophisticated forecast models, and monitor hurricanes in near real-time to understand their behavior. These advancements have collectively resulted in more timely and accurate forecasts and warnings, more precise landfall predictions, and a better understanding of hurricane dynamics, ultimately enhancing public safety and preparedness.