Cloud and Moisture Imagery
Background
The CMIP will be produced using all 16 bands in three coverage areas: FD, CONUS, and mesoscale. Bands 1-6 are the visible bands (1 and 2) and near-IR (3-6), while bands 7-16 are IR bands.
The CMIP is responsible for ABI cloud and moisture imagery, and will produce 54 total end-products, including:
- 16 ABI single-band products ([spectral] radiance in bands 1-16) for 3 coverage areas
- Multi-band spectral products (16 bands at 2 km resolution) for 3 coverage areas in NetCDF4 format
- Multi-band spectral products (16 bands at 2 km resolution) for 3 coverage areas in McIDAS format
The three coverage areas are for full disk, CONUS and mesoscales. Additionally, the CMIP end-products will include the information about the methods of converting radiance to reflectance factor and BV for bands 1-6, and converting radiance to BT and then to BV for bands 7-16. The BV for a pixel on a display is perhaps at lower precision. By community convention the term radiance is used throughout this document and actually refers to a spectral radiance; e.g., technically radiance is only at a single frequency, while spectral radiance is radiance per unit frequency (either wavelength or wavenumber). It should also be noted that the radiance is actually an average value, weighted by the sensor response for that given band.
Product Description
The CMIP algorithms consist of acquiring the radiometrically calibrated and mapped radiances and converting to BV. The BV are used as indices either to customized color tables or to the red/green/blue color components of a composite image, resulting in enhanced imagery intending to highlight environmental features of interest
Improvements and Benefits
The GOES-R Cloud and Moisture Imagery products will provide high resolution (both spatially, radiometrically and temporal) datasets that can be easily viewed within visualization systems. The data will be provided for all coverage areas (Full Disk, CONUS and Mesoscale) for all ABI channels.
GOES-R Simulated Imagery for all ABI channels
How does it work? - Algorithm
The Cloud and Moisture Imagery product will utilize all 16 spectral bands of the GOES-R ABI to monitor the Earth, Atmosphere, and Ocean system. The measured reflectance (radiance) within the visible (infrared) bands will be converted into Brightness Values (BVs) and Brightness Temperatures (BTs), respectively. The BVs and BTs will be used to generate an array of products aiding forecasters in monitoring and predicting all kinds of hazards: weather, oceanographic, and climate-related phenomena.
See the GOES-R ATBD page for all ATBDs.
How are the results compared to existing data? - Calibration and Validation
Imagery does not have traditional “truth” datasets for comparison such as radiosondes or aircraft data. High resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) coupled with advanced forward modeling is used to generate radiances, brightness temperatures, and brightness values for comparison with the ABI imagery.
Comparison of imagery in different bands and temporal sequence are performed to check for consistency and to identify image artifacts. This includes both static and animated images of the various channels. In addition, there should be significant instrument calibration and L2+ product verification that occurs before L2+ product validation.
Finally, time series of brightness temperatures and/or reflectance factors (over the same domain) can help to monitor unrealistic changes.
A more technical validation presentation, (PDF, 36.56 MB) are also available