{"id":184,"date":"2010-04-28T11:59:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rammb.cira.colostate.edu\/visit\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/28\/is-it-real-or-is-itsynthetic-goes-r-imagery\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T09:06:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T16:06:29","slug":"is-it-real-or-is-itsynthetic-goes-r-imagery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/2010\/04\/28\/is-it-real-or-is-itsynthetic-goes-r-imagery\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it Real, or is it…Synthetic GOES-R Imagery?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Braun, Louie Grasso and Dan Lindsey<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As part of the GOES-R Proving Ground activities, synthetic GOES-R imagery has been produced from model output run at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). This model\u00a0is being\u00a0run with horizontal grid spacing of 4 km over the continental United States during the spring of 2010. An automated system was designed at the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) to send model output to the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) as soon as it is produced. At CIRA, an automated system was also in place to generate synthetic GOES-R imagery at selected wavelengths. Once the imagery is ready, the data is converted into McIdas AREA files and placed on an ADDE server at CIRA. These AREA files are then acquired at the SPC for viewing on an NAWIPS system.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As a result of the automated system, such imagery represents a real time forecast of GOES-R imagery. Due to resource limitations, only four GOES-R bands could be generated in a real time setting. As an example, Figures 1 and 2 show a twelve hour loop (The twelve hour loop shows images every hour from 1200 UTC to 0000 UTC) <\/span>of\u00a0GOES-R synthetic WV forecast imagery\u00a0(top)with that of the corresponding GOES-13 WVobserved imagery (bottom).\u00a0 Figures 3 and 4 show the\u00a0same 12 hour period for both forecast and\u00a0observed\u00a0imagery, only for the longwave IR channel.\u00a0\u00a0Differences in brightness temperatures between GOES-R synthetic and GOES-12 observed may be due to the different central wavelengths and band widths (GOES-R 6.185 \u00b5m vs GOES-13 6.5 \u00b5m – for the WV channels – and GOES-R 10.35 \u00b5m vs GOES-13 10.7 \u00b5m – for the IR channels)<\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\"GOES-R<\/a><\/span><\/span>(Figure 1: Animated gif of GOES-R 6.185 \u00b5m synthetic forecast WV brightness temperatures. The twelve hour loop shows forecast images every hour from 1200 UTC to 0000 UTC – April 24, 2010.)<\/span><\/span><\/span>\"GOES-13<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Figure 2: Same as figure 1, but for GOES-12 6.5 \u00b5m WV channel observed brightness temperatures.)<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"GOES-R<\/a>(Figure 3: Same as figure 1, but for GOES-R 10.35 \u00b5m forecast synthetic IR brightness temperatures.)<\/span>\"GOES-13<\/a><\/span>(Figure 4: Same as figure 1, but for GOES-12 10.7 \u00b5m observed brightness temperatures.)<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\nNote of interest – this imagery was forecast and observed for April 24, 2010 which was a day of extreme\u00a0 severe weather over the southern portion of the USA…particularly for Mississippi and Alabama.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nearly 60\u00a0tornadoes\u00a0were\u00a0counted for April 24 alone\u00a0(about 40\u00a0of these were discrete tornado reports).\u00a0\u00a0At least 12 people lost their lives on this day.\u00a0 A three day total\u00a0for this spring’s strongest severe weather system (up to now)\u00a0was that it spawned\u00a0around 110\u00a0tornadoes (about 90\u00a0when\u00a0adjustments were made for duplicate reports)\u00a0between April 22nd and April 24th. This\u00a0three day period\u00a0produced more tornadoes than had been\u00a0reported\u00a0during the entire previous four months!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Braun, Louie Grasso and Dan Lindsey As part of the GOES-R Proving Ground activities, synthetic GOES-R imagery has been produced from model output run at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). This model\u00a0is being\u00a0run with horizontal grid spacing of 4 km over the continental United States during the spring of 2010. An automated system Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,48,15,19,29,31],"tags":[61,63,123,136,139,158,185,220,231,241,248,268],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geostationary-satellite-discussion","category-goes-r","category-goes-r-proving-ground","category-miscellaneous","category-severe-weather","category-tornadoes","tag-alabama","tag-april-24","tag-forecast","tag-goes-r","tag-goes-13","tag-imagery","tag-mississippi","tag-proving-ground","tag-severe","tag-synthetic","tag-tornado-outbreak","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6164,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/6164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rammb2.cira.colostate.edu\/visit-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}