2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk GOES-R Proving Ground WFO Interaction Activities Presentation at Winter Workshop – Ed Szoke (CIRA & NOAA/ESRL/GSD) CIRA members working on this project: Mark DeMaria, Steve Miller, Don Hillger, Deb Molenar, Hiro Gosden, Bernie Connell, Greg DeMaria and Renate Brummer Outline of today's talk - Brief overview of GOES-R - Purpose of the GOES-R Proving Ground - What this activity means to you - List and description of products to be tested on AWIPS - Time line of when things will be happening - Future activities...

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Overview of GOES-R Homepage at Although the first launch is still a ways off (FY2015), the purpose of interaction now is to provide better knowledge of the potential new capabilities of GOES-R to forecasters so that they can take full advantage of the products when the satellite comes online, as well as to get feedback from forecasters in order to develop useful products now and in the future.

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk To this end the GOES-R Proving Ground project has been developed. Here is the mission statement.... GOES-R Satellite Proving Ground Mission Statement The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) Satellite Proving Ground project engages the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast and warning community in an interactive demonstration of selected capabilities anticipated from the next generation of NOAA geostationary earth observing systems. The Proving Ground project objective is to bridge the gap between research and operations by: Utilizing current systems (satellite, terrestrial, or model/synthetic) to emulate various aspects of future GOES-R capabilities Focusing on environmental applications bearing highest practical value to NWS users Infusing GOES-R products and techniques into the NWS operational platform, AWIPS. A key element of this activity is a sustained interaction between Proving Ground team and NWS users for the purposes of training, product evaluation, and solicitation of user feedback. The Proving Ground relies on close coordination with the GOES-R Algorithm Working Group (AWG) and Risk Reduction programs as sources of demonstration products, and will enhance the operational transition pathway for those programs. The intended outcomes of this project are an increased awareness for both developers and users of the GOES-R observing system, and an effective transition of unique GOES-R research products to the operational weather community.

Capable, informed users Flexible inventive providers Knowledge brokers that recognize new connections between capabilities and needs Champions of new opportunities Vision for GOES-R3 GOES-R demonstrations and training Exploratory Algorithms, New Products and Applications Product Assurance and Science support for the AWG

AWG Algorithm Candidate Development & Intercomparison AWG Algorithm Selection and Pre- Operational Demonstration GOES-R Risk Reduction Exploratory Algorithm Development GOES-R3: Exploratory Algorithm Development

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Who is involved in the GOES-R Proving Ground Project? Here is a listing, along with their interactions with the NWS. CIRA: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, at CSU in Fort Collins Interact with WFOs in Cheyenne and Boulder Longer term may also interact with other WFOs, and perhaps NHC website: CIMSS: Center for Satellite Applications and Research (Madison, Wisconsin, with the University of Wisconsin). Interacting directly with Wisconsin WFOs (Sullivan, LaCrosse) Also provide some MODIS imagery to a number of WFOs on AWIPS website: SPoRT: Short-term Prediction Research and Transition in Huntsville, Alabama They are with NASA, and their goal is to transition NASA data and research Also involved in the GOES-R Proving Ground activities Have established close interaction with Southern Region WFOs They have online assessment forms that might be something we can use website: AWG – Algorithm Working Group A collection of 15 teams responsible for developing the new algorithms from GOES-R Close interaction with the algorithm developers through this project should lead to better products for forecasters when GOES-R is launched.

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk What new capabilities will be available with GOES-R? New bandwidths 16 channels in GOES-R vs. 5 (of the 6 available) in the current GOES Higher spatial resolution 2 km for IR 0.5 to 1 km for visible (depending on band) Increased temporal resolution Full-disk every 5 minutes 1 minute rapid scan

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Current GOES Channels

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk GOES-R channels (Note that the current MODIS satellite has similar channels, so MODIS imagery will often be used to demonstrate GOES-R capabilities.)

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk So....what does all this mean for you? We provide to you: Test products displayable on AWIPS (to be discussed in detail to follow) - These based on an earlier meeting here in June - These products allow you to see some of the new capabilities - We expect to have the first products on your AWIPS by the end of October What we hope to get back from you: Feedback on these products, such as - How useful are they - Presentation (color combos, etc.) Methods to gather this feedback are still being determined - free-form comments, perhaps sent by - online forms (SpoRT uses these) Some benefits of participation in the GOES-R Proving Ground activities - Opportunity to get new products that you deem useful into AWIPS now - Influence what will be available in AWIPS2 - Products will be improved when GOES-R comes online because of your help - Important to remember that this is an ongoing process, not something that is only off in the distance somewhere...

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk List of our test products, along with detailed information on these, can be found at

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Online presentations for these products can be found on the CIRA link of the GOES-R Proving Ground homepage at:

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Products for CYS WFO determined from our June meeting Results of the meeting of CIRA folks with WFO CYS (Melissa and others) When: June 20, 2008 What was discussed: Introduced concept of the GOES-R Proving Ground Went over list of potential products Feedback from this meeting determined the products to initially try Products

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Let's look at these products: first, the “Geo-Color Multi-Layer Blending” product

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk “Geo-Color Multi-Layer Blending” product This is an exciting new product that allows one to identify several different features in a single image For example, low clouds and fog appear as normally seen in a visible image during the day, but then in the same image appear as a different color at night. This product demonstrates the multi-parameter visualization possible with GOES-R And in addition the natural color imagery available from GOES-R How is it constructed for this demonstration? Technique blends VIS/IR satellite imagery with MODIS blue marble and DMSP/OLS backgrounds. Demonstration resolution 4 km every 30 minutes Final GOES-R product resolution 2 km every 5 minutes

Migration of Products into AWIPS – not necessarily an easy task!  We have created the required 8-bit color tables for the following products: geocolor, snowcover, dust/ash, fire, nighttime visible.  We have coded up and tested the automated transfer (via sftp) between the NRL cluster and machines here at CIRA.  Steve Miller (CIRA) has written and tested the scripts on this end to grab the files, scale them to the 8 bit color tables, and write them out to netCDF.  We are about to test the end-to-end system.

Migration of Products into AWIPS (cont.) Next steps:  Automate ingest into AWIPS and make available to our testbeds in Cheyenne and Boulder.  Once this is working for geocolor, we'll turn on a couple of other products following the same protocol.

Visible Data Foreground True Color Background Solar Zenith Weighting Blended VIS/IR/Background Infrared Data Foreground Night Lights Background

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Note the offshore clouds in the current GOES imagery

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Note the difference with the new product...

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Hurricane Katrina in GeoColor GOES-12: 27 August 2005

24-bit to 8-bit Reduction into AWIPS Original We are confident that most new applications can be adapted to AWIPS

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Next product we will look at is the “Snow/Cloud Discrimination” product

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk GOES-based Snow / Cloud Discrimination Product: This product uses a GOES-based 3 color technique to distinguish low (water) clouds and fog (white) from high (ice) clouds (magenta), from snow on the ground (red area).

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk GOES-based Snow / Cloud Discrimination Product Product is computed from GOES visible, shortwave, and longwave spectral bands The demo product will be available at 4 km resolution every 30 min The GOES-R product will be available at 2 km spatial resolution and at 5 min temporal resolution. This demonstrates the advanced channel capability with GOES-R. Another version of this product will use MODIS imagery (shown next) MODIS has higher resolution (1 km) Also, the snow cover imagery is improved via cirrus filtering using the MODIS 1.38 micron band One limitation though is an image is only available once every ~6 h The figure below shows an example how high spatial resolution MODIS snow cover imagery is improved via cirrus filtering using the 1.38 mm band.

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk MODIS Snow/Ice Discrimination Product

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk The next product is the “Low cloud/fog” product

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk “Low cloud/fog” product : The demo product will be available every 30 min at 4 km resolution In the GOES-R era, this will improve to 5 min and 2 km. This is a GOES-based day/night technique which distinguishes low (water) clouds and fog from high (ice) clouds in a satellite image. High clouds are masked out (black) based on cloud-top temperatures below 0 o C. The product is computed from GOES shortwave and longwave spectral bands, to retrieve the reflected component in the shortwave by subtracting the spectrally-equivalent emitted component using the longwave infrared band. Water-drop/fog/stratus clouds show up because of their high reflectance/albedo in the shortwave

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk High-resolution water vapor imagery This MODIS imagery is currently provided by the SpoRT group to a number of WFOs. Resolution is 2 km, but only available every ~6 hours

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Other Products that were discussed in the June meeting Remember, this is a work in progress! Things will be evolving over the the next few months and beyond. We will be determining the best ways to bring the other products that were discussed to AWIPS GOES Fire Detection Product GOES Soundings and Stability Indices GOES Convective Cloud Top Heights

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk Other things that will occur down the road... Over time more products will be available There is much info online at the GOES-R Proving Ground website at We will be determining the best way to get feedback Simple comments ed to us is one way More formal online forms are likely to be used SpoRT has these (example next) online at

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk extra slides

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk The next product is the “Simulated True Color” product

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk The “Simulated True Color” product (middle image below) is created by synthesizing the missing green band in the GOES imagery, to come close to representing the True Color image on the left that is from MODIS. This product demonstrates new imagery and a visualization technique that will be available with GOES-R. True color imagery is nicer to look at and easier to use to see different features. To construct this product MODIS imagery is used, so it will only be available about once every 6 hours, but at a high resolution ( m). The actual GOES-R product will be at km resolution but every 5 minutes.

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk