Real-Time Data Management and Visualization for Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) in ArcGIS Platform

Real-time GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) data detects the radiant energy signatures produced by lightning flashes. Every 20 seconds, GLM produces Level 2 data containing the point locations of ‘energy-weighted centroid’ lightning occurrences.

GLM brings a valuable application opportunity in various domains for weather and climate science including various aspects of disaster response and planning. In this session, we will share our workflow and the integration of GLM data in the ArcGIS platform. To support real-time and historical applications of GLM data, the workflow of our feature service is focused around the GLM group product. Using out-of-the-box ArcGIS geoprocessing tools, a GLM group feature class is created and stored in a geodatabase. This feature class is then merged to create a rolling 5-minute GLM group aggregated feature class that is updated once per minute. Once aggregated to a 5-minute product, we create a GLM group density feature class using the processing capabilities of the ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Server. Finally, the resulting feature class gets symbolized with desired color rendering to emphasize the intensity of thunderstorms. To avoid predicting errors and uncertainties, we selected our density bins appropriately sized to fit a 10-km uniform spatial resolution of the GLM sensor.

Depending on the objective of the intended user, the hosted lightning density feature class can be stored for case study analysis or continuously updated to render real-time data. GLM products hosted as a web service through the ArcGIS Platform will improve the interoperability and accessibility of the data to a large pool of GIS users, including scientists, emergency managers, and planners.