Reprocessing GOES GVAR Data

The National Centers for Environmental Information in partnership with the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites - North Carolina is reprocessing the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) Variable (GVAR) period of record: 1994-2015. In the initial round of processing, it is harvesting numerous products that include:

• GOES scene statistics - Statistical summaries and thumbnail to allow analysis of GOES data quality.
• ISCCP B1 files - Resampled full disk imagery to be used in a reprocessed International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP).
• Clouds - Cloud information retrieved using the CLAVR-x (Clouds from AVHRR) algorithm, adapted for GOES data.
• Gridded GOES data - A remapped and calibrated GOES brightness temperatures and reflectance provided in Climate and Forecasting (CF)-compliant netCDF format (similar to the current GridSat-B1, but at a higher spatial and temporal resolution) [in collaboration with Sustained and coordinated processing of Environmental Satellite data for Climate Monitoring (SCOPE-CM)].
• Surface Albedo - Also in collaboration with SCOPE-CM, a geostationary based surface albedo.
• HURSAT - Full temporal and spatial resolution data over hurricanes (similar to the Hurricane Satellite (HURSAT) data but at a higher resolution).

After the initial effort completes, the team will evaluate other algorithms that might be included in a 2nd round of reprocessing. The work is based on the inventory of GOES data available through Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS). Given gaps in the archive, it is likely that another project will begin to fill gaps there (by working with other existing archives) in order to build a complete archive of GOES data. While the present effort is focused on the GVAR period of record, it is hoped that it will expand to the pre-GVAR (e.g., Mode A, etc.) data when GVAR processing is complete.