An Update on CIRA's NWS Proving Ground Activities: Advancing New Satellite Products Into Operations

With the successful launch of GOES-16 late in 2016 and hopefully GOES-S (to become GOES-17), forecasters are seeing more satellite data then ever before, with both new satellite bands and an ever-increasing number of new satellite products. The GOES-R Proving Ground efforts gave many forecasters a preview of some of these new capabilities and this has likely helped smooth the introduction of all this new information. The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) has been an active participant in the GOES-R Proving Ground since 2008, along with Proving Ground partners NASA SPoRT and CIMSS. Although a wealth of new satellite-derived products have been and are being added into operations based on baseline product decisions made in the years prior to the launch of GOES-R, new products have since been developed that would potentially benefit operations. Demonstrating and evaluating these potential products with forecasters remains an objective of the Proving Ground.

A big advantage over earlier Proving Ground product demonstrations is that now real GOES-16/17 data can be used to generate new products, as opposed to using other sources for potential new products such as synthetic imagery or less frequent products generated from Polar orbiting satellites. This makes demonstrating products easier and more useful for forecasters, and one would expect greater acceptance for trying the potential products. In this presentation we will discuss some of the new products that CIRA has developed and is or will be testing amongst interested WFOs and at National Centers. These include GeoColor imagery, Snow cloud/discriminator products, and DEBRA blowing dust products. In this presentation we will show examples of these products and describe how interested partners can get involved in evaluating them.