Developing AWIPS to support forecaster demands in the new generation of satellites

National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists will use the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), as the operational weather information display tool, to visualize imagery and products from the new generation of weather satellites. The imagery will exist at higher spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions than heritage satellites, and this requires changes and improvements to AWIPS II.

This presentation will outline recent enhancements to AWIPS II for processing and displaying imagery and products from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) R-Series, Himawari-8/9, and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), and how these enhancements will enable NWS forecasters to visualize satellite imagery and products as part of the future forecast process so that the amount of information is maximized and the time to acquire that information is minimized. It will focus specifically on efforts at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) to contribute satellite-derived information to radar images for use during the warning process, assemble multi-spectral information into Red-Green-Blue (RGB) composites, and enable forecasters to more easily transition between reflective solar bands, and infrared bands, as day transitions to night. Finally, planned and potential changes that will make way for GOES-R and Himawari-8/9 imagery visualization will be discussed, as well as the latest details regarding imagery and products from the instruments on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite that are starting to make an impact on NWS operations today.