There Goes the Neighborhood

The word goes is one of the most versatile words in the English language. It can be used in a variety of contexts to convey a wide range of meanings, from casual conversation to formal speech or writing. It’s a great word to learn for ESL students, and there are many ways to use it in a sentence.

“There goes the neighborhood” is a common phrase that refers to the gradual integration of American neighborhoods since the end of official segregation in the 1960s. The term arose due to white residents of an area being dismayed by the arrival of African American families into their community, often because of their fear that they wouldn’t take care of their property or bring down the local property values. In reality, this is not always the case, but there was certainly an element of prejudice at play.

GOES is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series. NOAA pays for and operates these satellites in partnership with NASA, which builds and launches them. Each satellite carries multiple observation instruments designed to monitor weather conditions at the surface and in the atmosphere, as well as solar-terrestrial space environments.

All GOES satellites are controlled from NOAA’s Satellite Operations Control Center (SCC) in Suitland, Maryland. The GOES series provides critical meteorological data that supports operational services, including weather forecasting and warnings to the public. GOES also supports atmospheric science research and environmental sensor design, and aids in numerical weather prediction model development and validation.

Each GOES satellite carries two primary payloads: the Imager and Sounder. The Imager detects the presence of clouds, water vapor, temperature and moisture over the Earth’s surface and atmosphere with spectral bands that detect infrared radiant energy and visible reflected solar energy. The Sounder detects vertical atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles, and provides information for the calculation of ozone distribution.

In addition to the primary GOES instruments, each satellite includes the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) to track total lightning activity with a storm-scale spatial resolution of 8 km over the Western Hemisphere in overlapping coverage. GOES-R will also include the Space Environment Monitoring instrument (SEM), which measures the impact of the Sun on Earth’s near-Earth solar-terrestrial electromagnetic environment and detects space weather hazards.

The GOES-R series will provide improved latency, full hemispheric coverage, and enhanced detection and monitoring of Earth and space weather phenomena. It will improve the detection and warning capabilities of a wide range of important environmental phenomena, including severe convective storms, volcanic eruptions, and the space environment, by providing better-resolution imagery with faster response times. The system will also feature a new compact coronagraph to enhance the visibility of space weather events.