GOES-R Baseline Instruments

Since the launch of the GOES-8 in April of 1994, the current series of Geostationary Environmental Satellites (GOES) has performed well, providing nearly uninterrupted coverage of the earth's environment and near earth space environment. In order to meet the more demanding future user requirements the instruments on GOES-R, scheduled for a 2015 launch include an Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), a Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), and advanced space and solar observing instruments. The GOES-R instruments will monitor a wide range of phenomena, including applications relating to: weather, climate, ocean, land, cryosphere, hazards, solar and space with much improved spatial and temporal resolution. Prior to the GOES-R Series GOES-N, O, and P will also offer some significant improvements over the current GOES satellites. The information from the GOES-R series can be combined for a better depiction of the current state of the earth-atmosphere. This should allow for greatly improved communication and visualizations including combining products from the ABI and GLM with high temporal and spatial resolution.

The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is a state of the art, 16-band imager covering 6 visible (VIS) to near-infrared (NIR) bands (0.47 um to 2.25 um), and 10 infrared (IR) bands (3.9 um to 13.3 um). Spatial resolutions are band dependent, 0.5 km at nadir for broadband VIS, 1.0 km for NIR and 2.0 km for IR. The ABI will be 5 times faster than the current GOES, and will be capable of scanning the Full Disk (FD) in approximately 5 minutes. ABI will improve every product from the current GOES Imager and will introduce a host of new products. Current products include: retrieved Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs), Quantitative Precipitation Estimates (QPEs), cloud parameters, clear-sky radiances, and surface (skin) temperature; and detection and characterization of fires, volcanic ash, fog and cloud-top information. ABI will also provide cloud-top phase/particle size information and much improved snow detection, aerosol and smoke detection for air quality monitoring and forecasts. Other new products include vegetation monitoring and upper-level SO2 detection.

The new GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) is a single channel, near-IR transient detector that will continuously measure total lightning activity with near-uniform spatial resolution of 8-12 km over the full-disk. The GLM will detect total lightning flash rate and changes in flash rate over both land and water. Total lightning activity is related to the updraft strength and the amount of ice in the mixed phase region of thunderstorms. By monitoring lightning frequency, one can infer storm kinematics and microphysical structure and, therefore, changes in storm severity.

The solar instruments and the Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS), to monitor the highly variable solar and near-Earth space environment continue a long history of space weather observations from the GOES program. These observations are used to protect life and property of those sensitive to solar and space weather fluctuations.

Additional capabilities include improved user services, such as GOES-R ReBroadcast (GRB), Search and Rescue (SAR), Data Collection System (DCS), Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN) and Low Rate Information Transmission (LRIT). More information on GOES-R can be found on the joint NOAA/NASA GOES-R Program Office website: http://www.goes-r.gov/.

This paper will provide a comparison of the capabilities of the current GOES with the GOES N-P series and with the future GOES-R Series.