The Satellite Analysis Branch, part of NESDIS' Satellite Services Division, is the operational focal point for real-time imagery products within NESDIS. It is also responsible for doing Dvorak technique intensity fixes on tropical cyclones. Its roots lie in the establishment of the Meteorological Satellite Section by January 1959.
Its primary mission is to "operate new proof of concept satellite analysis techniques needed to support disaster mitigation and warning services" for the U.S. government and its agencies. It also distributes real-time satellite imagery from geostationary satellites. The SAB also produces graphics for Tropical Rainfall Potential forecasts for all tropical systems in the Western Hemisphere and many in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Away from tropical cyclones, the SAB functions as the Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center, having been designated as such by the International Civil Aviation Organization in 1997. It also does snow and ice analysis, and has done so, along with its parent organizations NESDIS and SSD, since 1966.
Famous quotes containing the words satellite, analysis and/or branch:
“Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)