2017 was a grievously good year for cataclysms.

Infernos engulfed not just California, which suffered its most destructive wildfire season on record, but the greater American West. A hyperactive hurricane season delivered the Gulf Coast its costliest thrashing in history. And those hurricanes also triggered tornado outbreaks across the southern United States, contributing to one of the most active and prolonged tornado seasons ever documented.

It could be a sign of things to come: Climate models project that rising CO 2 levels will stoke more violent tempests, fires, and floods. Fortunately, confronted by the planet's increasingly crazypants forecast, scientists have developed an arsenal of tools for observing, understanding, and anticipating severe weather.

Chief among these are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-R (pronounced "goes-are" or "Gozer," like the Ghostbusters villain, depending on who you ask) weather satellites. The acronym stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The "R" at the end has to do with a convoluted naming convention: NOAA assigns each GOES satellite a letter before launch and a number when it achieves orbit. Thus, in 1975, GOES-A became GOES-1 when it parked itself 22,300 miles above the Earth, whereas GOES-G, which was destroyed in a failed launch, never received a number. Complicating things further is the fact that GOES-R is both the name for NOAA's latest series of environmental satellites as well as one of the satellites in that series. The first, GOES-R, launched successfully in November 2016, thereby becoming GOES-16. The second, GOES-S, is slated to launch March 1 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The two hour launch window opens at 5:02 pm Eastern, and assuming the 11,500-pound spacecraft makes it into geostationary orbit safely, it'll go by GOES-17. You can watch below.

Got it? Good. NOAA's inscrutable satellite nomenclature aside, the important thing to know about GOES-16 and (fingers crossed) -17 is that they are the most sophisticated environmental forecasting spacecraft ever to ride a rocket to orbit. They'll monitor the eastern and western portions of the US, respectively, and their adjoining oceans, spanning an area that extends from the west coast of Africa to the eastern reaches of New Zealand. Together, they'll provide researchers and meteorologists with valuable data on weather systems—including violent storms, wildfires, lightning, and dense fog—in close to real time. The upshot: more accurate forecasts on your weather app, for one. More robust climate models, for another. But most consequentially: more advance warning, the next time local conditions turn cataclysmic.

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V booster and Centaur stage for NOAA's GOES-S are offloaded from the Mariner transport ship at the Army Wharf at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA/Leif Heimbold

Assuming it achieves orbit, the satellite formerly known as GOES-S will provide that warning with the help of powerful instruments like the Advanced Baseline Imager. Its 70 megapixel camera will scan the planet along 16 spectral channels tuned to detect visible, infrared, and near-infrared signals at four times the resolution and five times faster than GOES-15, the satellite GOES-S is destined to replace. Translation: This sentinel in the sky can simultaneously image the Western hemisphere once every 15 minutes, the continental US every five, and smaller areas of interest every 30 seconds.