Helping to Prepare Users for the GOES-R Era: ABI Imagery and Products

The capabilities of the GOES-R satellite series represent a major improvement over the legacy GOES series and bring a number of challenges and opportunities for the meteorological communities. To help meet these challenges a wide range of preparation, training, and outreach activities have been developed at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) in coordination with stakeholders in the National Weather Service (NWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to prepare operational users, forecasters, industry, and international partners for the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Tools developed include interactive training web applications (webapps), distance learning modules, specialized training software, updated ABI band fact sheets, and an improved “realtime” GOES weighting functions webpage. These tools have aided the team’s delivery of short courses and NWS training sessions. The ABI band fact sheets summarize the pertinent operational information associated with each band. The specialized HTML5 webapps demonstrate the temporal, spatial, and spectral information content of the ABI. The one-day in-person short courses have been associated with the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting and Broadcast Meteorology Conferences. The distance learning modules cover a wide range of pertinent topics, including the basic operations of the ABI. NWS forecasters, including at Guam and Hawaii, and other personnel were trained using satellite familiarization software developed at the SSEC. In the past year SSEC training personnel have provided training at many events including the 2018 AMS Annual Meeting, 2018 NWS IMET Continuity of Excellence Exercise (CEE), AMS 12^th Fire and Forest Meteorology Symposium, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s 2018 Congress, a NOAA GOES-16 workshop at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, and the AMS 10th International Conference on Urban Climate. The goal of these activities is to improve user readiness in scientists and decision makers, and for a better informed public.