McIDAS-V, visualization, validation and data analysis for GOES-R

The fifth generation of the Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS-V) is the next generation in the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Center's 35-year history of sophisticated McIDAS software packages. It is a Java-based, open-source, and freely available software visualization package for satellite and other geophysical data. Its advanced capabilities provide very interactive, 4-D displays, an abstract mathematical data model with built-in metadata, and user defined analysis and computation. These powerful capabilities to integrate data, analysis and visualization are being applied to the next generation of geostationary remote sensing instruments under development for the GOES-R and VIIRS programs. In support of the GOES-R algorithm development teams, several types of satellite data are being used as proxy datasets, including current GOES, MSG SEVIRI, MODIS and MTSAT observations as well as simulated ABI data sets. McIDAS-V provides an intuitive user interface to the GOES-R routine processing framework by adapting AWG products to the McIDAS-V data model. This will allow GOES-R scientists and algorithm developers to analyze and visualize their products, enabling algorithm evaluation and iterative development. Examples from the GOES-R development framework as well as uses for validation of the algorithms, such as cloud top height, will be shown.