GOES Fundamental Climate Data Record: Historical GOES 8-15

Climate Data Records (CDRs) are used to determine climate variability and change, requiring consistency, length, and continuity in time. In collaboration with EUMETSAT, NOAA is developing a GeoRing (Geostationary Ring) — a globally merged, inter-calibrated CDR from geostationary data offering higher temporal resolution than existing records. The GOES Fundamental CDR will contribute to a globally merged GeoRing product, forming a 40+ year record beneficial for regional applications such as solar energy, precipitation and drought monitoring, supporting reanalyses, and extreme weather analysis.

The existing dataset of historical GOES imagery is often not user-friendly, hindered by different modes of navigation, inconsistent calibration, and little to no data quality assessment. Our project seeks to establish a GOES Imager Fundamental Climate Data Record (GOES FCDR) for all satellites from SMS-1 through GOES 15, ensuring uniform format, uniform data quality assessment (the current historical data have little to no quality information), uniform calibration, and uniform navigation. As an FCDR, uniform calibration will be provided for visible and infrared channels, making observations as consistent as possible over the 40+ year record. This effort will focus on current and past approaches toward a consistent product. Since the GOES satellites have sensed the earth in different ways - scanning and 3 axis stabilized, and therefore these will be merged into a form to allow cross satellite navigation products.

Currently, we are working on the GVAR period (GOES 8-15), where we discuss the methods used to achieve uniform calibration and navigation. We assess the data quality of the satellite images using the EUMETSAT Geostationary Image Anomaly Detection (GIAD) Tool. These results are combined into a NetCDF format constructed to use seamlessly with currently operational GOES datasets. A team at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) and the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) is in the process of rescuing SMS 1-2 and GOES 1-7 data; in coordination, EUMETSAT is working towards extending GIAD for quality assessment for this early record.