Combining the Best of GOES-R ABI and JPSS VIIRS on Polar SLIDER

The Satellite Loop Interactive Data Explorer in Realtime (SLIDER) website (https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu) was originally developed in 2017 at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) for the display of full resolution geostationary satellite imagery in realtime. The following year, the SLIDER website was expanded to include global imagery from polar-orbiting satellites, beginning with the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) constellation (Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20 and, now, NOAA-21). This capability, referred to as “Polar SLIDER”, offers users the ability to monitor the polar environment in near-realtime. Polar SLIDER has long provided hemispheric composite imagery (both Northern and Southern Hemispheres) from the JPSS satellites. To the authors’ knowledge, Polar SLIDER is currently the only publicly available website offering global VIIRS data in near-realtime. In early 2023, Polar SLIDER was further expanded to include a new “JPSS CONUS” sector with the goal of providing improved views of the Contiguous United States (CONUS) and offering users the chance to take advantage of the best imagery offered by JPSS VIIRS and GOES-R ABI. In this new sector, low-latency VIIRS imagery acquired through Direct Broadcast and GOES-East/West imagery from ABI are re-mapped to a common projection and displayed in near-realtime. Through product overlays, users may now directly compare ABI and VIIRS on SLIDER and exploit the advantages that these operational geostationary and polar-orbiting imagers provide. To improve spatial matching of VIIRS and ABI, the imagery is corrected for the parallax artifacts caused by terrain. In addition, GOES-East and GOES-West imagery is seamlessly blended along the longitude of the Utah-Colorado border to ensure the highest spatial resolution ABI imagery is available everywhere throughout CONUS. With three VIIRS instruments now on-orbit, locations within CONUS are now covered by 3-6 afternoon VIIRS overpasses separated by ~25 minutes (with a similar repeat cycle in the early morning). At present, the JPSS CONUS sector on Polar SLIDER offers all 22 VIIRS bands (with a maximum spatial resolution of 375 m), all 16 ABI bands (500 m - 2 km resolution), and a wide variety of multispectral imagery products (including RGB composites) offered by both imagers. This talk will discuss the capabilities of the new JPSS CONUS sector, demonstrate use cases, and highlight the advantages of having three VIIRS instruments and two ABI instruments to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses.