Future satellite concepts and production platforms

As a National Center, the Aviation Weather Center has always been on the legacy N-AWIPS systems as our product production platform. With the transition of AWIPS-2 in the future, the door has been opened to get National Center forecasters exploring the potential of the system from an aviation perspective.

One big improvement will be the ability to layer imagery products. N-AWIPS only allows one image layer at a time. In AWIPS-2 you can load as many layers as you want (hmmm... so how many layers does it take to crash an AWIPS-2 system? I'm sure our forecasters will find out!). Several WFO forecaster participants showed one way to take advantage of this:

20160818 1700 UTC Visible satellite imagery with IR tops below -30C; WPC surface analysis and METARs overlaid

It is a simple overlay using visible satellite imagery with IR cloud tops only below -30C. This provides additional information on the structure and environment of the clouds. Other observations are overlaid as well, like METARs and WPC's surface analysis. Radar imagery is often also included in this type of display.

This type of flexibility shows the potential of the display system for aviation weather. Additional aviation products can be used instead, such as cloud bases.

20160818 1430 UTC Visible satellite imagery and Cloud Base Heights

Cloud Base Heights can be overlaid on visible imagery to further interrogate clouds. Radar can also be added to verify what the CBH is estimated. Other derived satellite products like Cloud Cover Layers or Cloud Top Heights could be used in place of the CBH depending on what type of forecast is being worked on.

To WFO forecasters this is old hat but National Center forecasters are just discovering all these functionalities.

However, there is one functionality that could take this potential one step further and benefit all forecasters. It is the idea of assimilating satellite data into GFE. Grid editing across the NWS is a tricky process as we have seen this week. There is an overwhelming plethora of grids and models to pick through and utilize, but often times a dose of reality is needed as a basis for this process. It has been suggested that one way to do this is to use observations like satellite as a starting point. In the AWT we have taken a baby step in that direction by displaying some satellite datasets in GFE.

Sample of Cloud Base Heights in GFE

Right now it is simply displaying an image in the GFE framework. Many forecaster this week have commented on the need to take this much further. They are editing grids for sky cover, ceilings, cloud base of scattered and few clouds, and visibility. With the advancement of satellite technology and, particularly with the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager, there is an enormous about clouds that we can interrogate; ceilings, tops, layers, phase, temperatures, optical depth, etc. All of this is valuable information as a starting point for grids, but a way to pull all of this data out and utilize it effectively is needed.

This is where GFE would come in. The goal? Creating smart tools to pull out certain satellite data in various environments and situations. For example, radiation fog along the east coast. The behavior of satellite data and cloud properties could be leveraged as a first guess or perhaps even integrated into the initialization of the model guidance within GFE. Some WFO offices have toyed with this in the past, but the concept -at least at the National Centers- is just being realized.

In future evaluations of the grid editing process at the AWT, we will be exploring this functionality in much more detail!