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 http://www.goes-r.gov/

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: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/goes_r_proving_ground/

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: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/cimss-satellite-proving-ground

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: http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/

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 currentMODIS satellite has similar channels, soMODIS imagery willoften be used to demonstrate GOES-Rcapabilities.)

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 email - 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 http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/goes_r_proving_ground/

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:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/goes_r_proving_ground

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

o ‘GeoColor’ Imagery (GOES based) with aLow-Cloud/Fog Enhancement included

o MODIS Snow Cover Producto MODIS Water Vapor (for detection of short

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 oC. 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 numberof 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 http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes_r/proving-ground.html

We will be determining the best way to get feedback Simple comments emailed to us is one way More formal online forms are likely to be used

SpoRT has these (example next) online at http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/sport_transition_assessment.html

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 (250-500 m). The actual GOES-R product will be at 0.5-1 km resolution but every 5 minutes.

2 October 2008 WFO Winter Workshop Talk