NexSat: Reaching out to users within and outside of the US

The Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division in Monterey, CA provides near real-time satellite products on a public domain website “NexSat” originally designed to demonstrate the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor over the continental US (CONUS) region. Recently, NexSat coverage has expanded globally to provide current, value-added and next-generation products from both geostationary (GEO) and low earth orbiting (LEO) sensors. Products have also been formatted for Google Earth visualization. NexSat users are multi-faceted, including government agencies, educational institutions, US military, TV weathercasters, severe storm/hurricane trackers, recreational users, county planners, the aviation community, as well as amateur weather satellite enthusiasts. Its training resources are designed to enrich the weather satellite knowledge of both novices and experts. Although experimental and demonstrative by design, NexSat is also relied upon for daily and near real-time operational applications.

NexSat demonstrates VIIRS by applying current ‘heritage sensors' such as NOAA's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Orbview's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). NexSat also provides products derived from sensors on current operational geostationary (GOES, METEOSAT and MTSAT) platforms. NexSat is a resource that trains personnel within the National Weather Service through the “Proving Grounds” concept via collaboration with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) . NexSat's recent efforts incorporate the use of the METEOSAT second generation (MSG) products to demonstrate multiple capabilities for the upcoming GOES-R satellites. The NexSat website has recently gone through an extensive reconstruction that is more user-friendly, with more products, and improved resources that includes animation services. New products include lightning detection, aerosol optical depth over desert terrain, and GEO dust and true color. This presentation will showcase a sampling of the products within NexSat as well as describe outreach and training efforts via NexSat. The goal is to promote NexSat as a “one-stop shop” for current and future satellite products.