GOES-R: Program Overview and Status (Invited Presentation)

NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) are a mainstay of weather forecasts and environmental monitoring in the United States. The next generation of GOES satellites, known as the GOES-R Series, with a planned launch in 2016, will usher in a new era of continuous imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth's Western Hemisphere and space weather monitoring to provide critical atmospheric, hydrologic, oceanic, climatic, solar, and space data. The GOES-R Series' primary instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), will provide twice the spatial and three times the spectral resolution while scanning the Earth nearly five times faster than the current GOES. The GOES-R Series will also host a new instrument, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) that is designed to continuously map in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning with a 8 km spatial resolution with near-uniform detection efficiency over the Western Hemisphere with a latency of less than 20 sec. It will provide information to improve severe storm monitoring and warnings and contribute to improved aircraft safety and efficient flight route planning. The GOES-R Series' space weather instruments will provide improved observations of the sun and space environment with more timely dissemination and early warning to a diverse user community. The GOES-R Series Program continues to make significant progress fostering user readiness through the GOES-R Proving Ground, hosting Users Conferences, developing user education through COMET, VISIT, and SHyMet, and improving communications via the GOES-R.gov website, Facebook page, and other education and public outreach events. The goal is to ensure that GOES-R products will provide full benefits to the user communities from the first day of operations. This presentation will provide an overview and status update of the GOES-R Series Program and the forthcoming activities leading to an operational GOES-R system. The new instruments, improved spacecraft, and ground system will allow for a host of new environmental products and services, while improving most of the products and services that are currently provided. The new observations will contribute to dramatically improved weather, water, and space environmental services in the next decades, enhancing public safety and providing economic benefits to the U.S. and our international partners.