Application of CF Metadata Conventions to GOES-R Weather Products

The GOES-R system is the United States' next generation civil geostationary weather satellite system with a first launch scheduled in early 2016 and an operational period extending to 2036. For GOES-R, and other ground and space-based weather data production systems, there is strategic importance in standardizing the syntax of weather observation and model data to further improve near- and long-term weather analysis and forecasting in the most cost-effective manner possible. To this end, the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) Level 1b and 2 weather products have been developed to fully conform to the Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Conventions, which were originally introduced in 2003 by a collaboration that included staff from U.S. and European climate and weather laboratories. The CF conventions provide the capability for weather product data sets to be self-describing and the means to capture the semantics of their constituent types of data, and the spatial, temporal, and measurement related characteristics. This paper discusses how the CF conventions have been applied to the twenty-six GOES-R ABI and GLM Level 1b and 2 products.