Snow and Cloud discrimination with GOES-R Proving Ground Product

The GOES-R Proving Ground serves to demonstrate products that will be available on future satellites that are part of the GOES-R series.  One of the Proving Ground products developed at CIRA is the GOES Snow / Cloud discriminator.

The utility of this product can be shown with the snow event that affected Colorado on October 26, 2011.  The GOES visible imagery the following day:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/27oct11_vis&image_width=962&image_height=911

depicts a field of clouds moving over snow covered land in portions of Colorado.  Due to snow and clouds having similar colors, it can be difficult to discriminate between snow on the ground and clouds, particularly for a still image.

Now let’s look at a animation of the GOES Snow / Cloud discriminator product for the same time period:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/27oct11_snow-cloud&image_width=962&image_height=911

In this product, snow cover on the ground appears red, low-level clouds (i.e., stratus) appear off-white, and high-level clouds (i.e., cirrus) appear bright magenta.  Note that this is a daytime only product.

A loop of other channels and proving ground products may be displayed at the same time for comparison purposes:

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/templates/loop_directory.asp?data_folder=training/visit/loops/27oct11_loop&image_width=962&image_height=911

Feel free to stop the loop and move through the slides using the arrow keys or the < and > buttons at the top.

Slide 1:  GeoColor Imagery

Slide 2: GOES 10.7 um (IR)  imagery

Slide 3:  GOES Low Cloud / Fog imagery

Slide 4:  GOES Snow / Cloud discriminator imagery

Slide 5: MODIS visible imagery