A First Look at Imagery from Himawari-8

Himawari-8 was launched by the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) in October 2014. It carries a state-of-the-art instrument known as the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI). The data and imagery from the AHI are of great interest to NOAA due to its similarity to the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) that will fly aboard GOES-R, due to be launched in 2016. Both imagers have 16 spectral bands, 2 km resolution in the infrared and 500 m resolution in one of the visible bands, and significantly improved temporal resolution compared to the current generation of geostationary satellites.

JMA began providing AHI data to NOAA in March 2015, and efforts have been underway within NOAA and its cooperative institutes, including CIRA and CIMSS, to view the imagery and multispectral products over a wide range of geographic locations and meteorological conditions. Events such as severe storms, typhoons, dust storms, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and pyroCumulonimbus have already been documented. This presentation will highlight the incredible imagery from Himawari-8 over its first year in orbit by showing many examples, and will explain how the data is being used to prepare for the launch of GOES-R.