The Current Status of the FNMOC Operational Satellite Data Tropical Cyclone Web Page

The operational satellite data tropical cyclone web (TCWeb) page at the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) was designed to minimize the threat of tropical cyclones to military and civilian interests world-wide. The TCWeb page has been running at FNMOC since 2001. It combines geostationary and polar orbiting satellite data together so that the Navy and the rest of the military community have a centralized real-time source of data dedicated to tropical cyclones. Over the past 18 years, the FNMOC TCWeb page has been continuously improved as new sensors are launched and now has the capability to provide 84 unique products from 11 polar-orbiting satellite sensors, 5 geostationary satellites and NEXRAD radar. The web page provides real-time updates over ten thousand times per day for military monitoring and forecasting. More advanced products from the next generation operational environment satellites, including Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP), Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and MetOp-C will be developed and added to the page which will greatly increase its utility and provide better intensity and track forecasts for tropical cyclones. New products will be generated from the Geolocated Information Processing System (GeoIPS) which was developed by NRL using open-source Python code allowing more efficient transitions as newer products are developed thus allowing much quicker turnaround from R&D to operations.

In this presentation, we will describe the detailed procedures through which data are disseminated and produced, the products that are posted on the TCWeb page and the impacts of these products have on TC monitoring and center fixing. The new processing system GeoIPS will also briefly be discussed.