Enhancing Impact-Based Decision Support Services in the GOES-R Era

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R series (GOES-R) is scheduled to launch in 2016 with data, imagery, and products that have increased spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions. These advanced capabilities allow forecasters to better monitor the atmospheric conditions preceding and associated with high-impact weather (e.g., deep convection, fog and low stratus, airborne dust, and wildfire behavior). Most importantly, the latency of the data, imagery, and products will drastically improve in the GOES-R era. This will allow forecasters to analyze atmospheric features while they are happening, as opposed to what has already happened. The ability to synthesize these data sets with other sources of short-term information directly into the forecaster decision support, in near real-time, will lead to enhanced situational intelligence. This is significant because if forecasters can identify critical features and thresholds easier and more accurately, impact-based decision support services (IDSS) can be elevated by communicating reliable hazardous weather information to National Weather Service (NWS) partners. Since 2008, the GOES-R Proving Ground, and more recently assisted by the Operations Proving Ground, has evaluated demonstration GOES-R products and capabilities with NWS forecasters. One of the goals of these evaluations has been to understand how these new capabilities can be integrated into NWS operations to enhance IDSS. This presentation will show how integrating satellite information with other datasets can enhance forecaster situational intelligence during high-impact weather and how forecasters can use this added knowledge to help NWS partners better understand the impact of environmental threats.