A Closer Look at GOES-16 Atmospheric Motion Vectors Derived from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI)

GOES-16 Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) are now being generated operationally at NOAA/NESDIS. These AMVs provide key wind observations to operational Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data assimilation systems (global and regional) and to field forecasters (e.g., NWS WFOs and National Centers) for situational awareness. The higher spatial and temporal resolution of the ABI imagery enables more winds to be produced while also capturing motion at smaller scales. Cloud-top properties (e.g., height, type, phase, cloud overlap) derived by upstream cloud algorithms are used by the winds algorithm to aid in the selection of viable targets/features to track, and most importantly, to assign representative heights to the AMVs. This talk will characterize the performance of the GOES-16 AMVs relative to available reference/ground truth wind measurements from rawinsondes and commercial aircraft. As part of this characterization, assessments of several case studies will be shown that demonstrate AMV performance.