GOES-16: Much Improved "Glasses" to View the Tropics

GOES-16, launched in November of 2016, represents the new generation of this nation’s geostationary weather satellites. During the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, the satellite was operating in ‘check-out’ mode, and providing the first opportunity to explore its new and improved capabilities. Among those capabilities is the continuous sampling of a targeted region with super-rapid imaging refresh (30-60 sec), which dramatically improves the visual presentation of the evolving storm structures, but also allows for high spatiotemporal derived quantities such as storm-scale atmospheric motion vectors. The improved spatial, spectral and signal-to-noise aspects will provide superior derived imagery products such as RGB airmass, dust, and cloud microphysics compared with the predecessor GOES.

This presentation will highlight the attributes of the new GOES-R/16 satellite series, and showcase the improvements to imagery and products that should benefit TC analysis and forecasting. Examples from the 2017 Atlantic TC season will be shown, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.