Preparing for the Next Generation of Satellites in AWIPS II: National Centers Perspective

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) version of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing Systems (N-AWIPS) has been the primary tool for display and manipulation of model, satellite, in situ and other observations for more than two decades, and has served the NCEP Centers well. NCEP is currently undergoing a massive transition from the N-AWIPS to AWIPS II-National Centers Perspective (NCP) hardware and software for displaying and disseminating operational meteorological data and products. The promise of NCP allows the NCEP Centers to use efficient software coded for the modern era and the ability to quickly display and navigate through very high resolution data for large areas of responsibility (e.g. CONUS or larger). The lack of this capability was a drawback of the AWIPS D2D software deployed at Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) for smaller warning areas. National Centers will have access to large volumes of satellite imagery via local ground ingest stations and the NESDIS PDA. The Satellite Proving Ground has been providing NCEP Centers with sample datasets of proxy GOES-R, Himawari, and S-NPP products to test data flow and ingest for display. This allows forecasters the opportunity to evaluate the new satellite products in parallel during the transition from N-AWIPS to NCP. This presentation will discuss the progress and lessons learned from transitioning and displaying legacy and next generation satellite products into the NCP environment in both McIDAS AREA and netCDF4 formats. This work is a collaborative effort between NCEP and the Satellite Proving Ground.