"The Use of the RGB Airmass Product at the HPC, OPC, NHC, and SAB GOES-R Proving Grounds during the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season"

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites R-Series (GOES-R) Proving Ground (PG) Program was organized to demonstrate the next generation geostationary satellite products and capabilities that will be incorporated into National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operations. Starting in July 2011, proxy GOES-R data and products were demonstrated for forecasters at the National Weather Service (NWS) Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC), Ocean Prediction Center (OPC), and National Hurricane Center (NHC), along with the Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB) of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). These pre-operational demonstrations allowed forecasters to use and evaluate proxy and simulated GOES-R data from research and operational satellite instruments (the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) from the Centre National d'Etudes Spaciales (Le CNES) and the Spinning Enhanced Visible InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)), Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model forecasts, and lightning networks in a quasi-operational environment to support their forecast and warning decision making. In evaluating these products, the forecasters were exposed to the strengths, limitations, and constraints of the new GOES-R capabilities prior to its launch and provided valuable feedback to the product developers. The product developers will then have an opportunity to use these evaluations to improve the products before they are incorporated into operations.

The first product evaluated at HPC, OPC, NHC, and SAB was the Red, Green, Blue (RGB) Airmass product. The RGB Airmass product is a multispectral satellite product where information from the infrared channel, two water vapor channels and the ozone channel is assigned to the intensity of red, green, and blue color shading for each pixel. This product proved quite useful during the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season as many systems were observed transitioning from tropical to extratropical storms. The RGB Airmass product showed its value by indicating the introduction of baroclinicity and positive potential vorticity. Hurricane Katia and Hurricane Philippe are examples of storms that underwent extratropical transition with different results. The RGB Dust product was evaluated at NHC during their proving ground activities and proved to be quite useful in identifying potential Saharan Air Layer outbreaks in the vicinity of developing tropical cyclones. This product makes use of channel differences among the 10.8 μm, and 8.7 μm window channels and the 12.0 μm dirty window from the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. The Dust product shows temperature differences primarily caused by emissivity differences of dust and emission differences caused by water vapor. The dust appears as magenta or pink coloring, while clouds are red and black. In this paper, we set out to demonstrate the utility of these product in helping the operational community determine the risks associated with evolving tropical systems.