Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

CIRA now provides Himawari-8 daytime true color imagery and nighttime geocolor imagery:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/12nov15_tc_gc&number_of_images_to_display=70

The example above begins at 0230 UTC 12 November 2015 with most of the scene in daylight, therefore true color imagery is shown.  The CIRA Hybrid Atmospherically Corrected (HAC) method is applied to produce this “true color” imagery.

The Hybrid Atmospherically Corrected (HAC) true color method uses the red, green, and blue Himawari bands, in addition to some information from bands 4 (0.86 micrometers) and 13 (10.4 micrometers).  A Rayleigh correction is performed at each band in order to correct for the effects of Rayleigh scattering.  The result is an image that is significantly more crisp and clear, and less milky, than without the correction.

Once the imagery transitions over to nighttime the CIRA Geocolor algorithm is applied to the imagery.  White colors are high level ice clouds, reddish colors represent lower level liquid water cloud and city lights (static) are shown in yellow.  More information on the Geocolor imagery may be found here:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/research/goes-r/proving_ground/cira_product_list/geocolor_imagery.asp

Real-time Himawari-8 imagery may be viewed at this page:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/himawari-8.asp

See the “Full Disk AHI True Color” for the imagery in the example illustrated above.

A similar product is planned for GOES-R so you may familiarize yourself with this imagery from the Himawari-8 satellite presently.