High spectral resolution infrared radiances from the Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES) on Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R and beyond) will allow for monitoring the evolution of atmospheric profiles and clouds. The HES is currently slated to be launched in 2013. HES, together with the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) will provide enhanced spatial, temporal and vertical information for atmospheric soundings and clouds operationally. Trade-off studies have been done on the spectral coverage, spectral resolution, spatial resolution, temporal resolution, band-to-band co-registration and signal-to-noise ratio. HES data applications investigated include sounding temperature/moisture retrievals, trace gas estimation, cloud retrieval, surface property retrieval, etc. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) measurements from Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua platform are used to demonstrate the capability of HES on deriving the atmospheric, cloud and surface parameters with high accuracy.