Accessing Global Geostationary Satellite Data through SLIDER

The Satellite Loop Interactive Data Explorer in Realtime (SLIDER) website (https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu) was developed at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) for the display of full resolution geostationary satellite imagery in realtime. In 2017, when the website first launched, SLIDER offered imagery from Himawari-8 and GOES-16 - the first two geostationary satellites of the current generation defined by the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and its siblings (Advanced Himawari Imager [AHI] and Advanced Meteorological Imager [AMI]). Since then, SLIDER has been expanded to include GOES-West (GOES-17/18), Meteosat Second Generation (Meteosat-8/9/10/11) and Geo-KOMPSAT-2A, with plans to include Meteosat Third Generation (MTG-I1) as soon as the data are made publicly available. These satellites combine to provide nearly complete coverage of the tropics and mid-latitudes as viewed from the geostationary orbit. SLIDER’s ability to deliver low-latency, high-resolution geostationary satellite imagery with looping capability, product overlay and comparison tools, and other data interrogation tools has made it a go-to resource for operational forecasters, professional and amateur satellite meteorologists and the education/training community around the world. For example, a recent study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) determined that SLIDER was the most popular resource for viewing satellite imagery among forecasters throughout North and South America. Through interaction with forecasters throughout the Asia-Pacific region, we also know that SLIDER is heavily used in many smaller nations that have limited resources available for acquiring satellite data.

A companion effort at CIRA, supported by NOAA, aims to develop a website with a SLIDER-like user interface (UI) that will allow users to browse CIRA’s extensive archive of ABI imagery produced for SLIDER, and marry this imagery with the level-1b (L1b) and level-2 (L2) data products stored on NOAA’s cloud computing infrastructure. Once complete, this website will allow users to browse the imagery or search a database of known high-impact events, and acquire both the imagery and the ABI data from which it was derived. While this initial project is focused on ABI data/imagery, lessons learned may open avenues for similar efforts to link CIRA’s wealth of imagery to data provided by other geostationary satellite programs. This talk will provide an overview of the current SLIDER website and its capabilities and discuss the status of the companion effort to merge SLIDER’s imagery with direct access to ABI data stored on NOAA’s cloud computing infrastructure.