Tom Berger Discusses GOES-R and Space Weather

1:00

0:00 My name is Dr. Thomas Berger. I'm the director of NOAA Space Weather
0:03 Prediction Center in Boulder Colorado. GOES-R has two functions for us in space
0:07 weather forecasting. One, it has a telescope called SUVI which watches the
0:10 sun 24/7 to tell us when there's a flare on the sun. It also has an x-ray
0:15 spectrometer on board which actually measures the strength of that flare so
0:19 when the sun has one of these magnetic explosions or flares, GOES-R is going to
0:24 tell us where it occurred on the sun and how big it was. Using that information we
0:28 can tell whether there's an explosion coming towards us that might threaten us
0:31 with a geomagnetic storm. We then look for the DSCVR satellite to pick up
0:35 that storm on its way to Earth. It acts as our tsunami buoy in space if you will.
0:39 It picks it up about 15 to 30 minutes before it hits the Earth and finally
0:43 when it does arrive at the Earth, GOES-R has a nowcasting functionality and it
0:47 measures the magnetic field at the geosynchronous orbit. It measures the
0:50 particle radiation environment at the geosynchronous orbit due to this
0:54 explosion from the sun and tells us exactly what's happening
0:57 minute-by-minute as that geomagnetic storm progresses.