Hands-on Activities Designed to Familiarize National Weather Service Forecasters with Data from ABI on GOES-R and AHI on Himawari-8

Recent and ongoing launches of next-generation geostationary satellites offer a challenge to familiarize National Weather Service (and other) forecasters with the new capabilities of different spectral channels sensed by the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on GOES-R and the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8.  Hands on HTML5-based applets developed at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies allow for quick comparisons of reflectance in the visible (0.4 to 0.7 um) and near-infrared channels (0.86 to 2.2 um) and brightness temperatures in the infrared (3.9 to 13.3 um).  The web apps to explore the different channels on ABI and AHI are at http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/webapps/bandapp/;  those that offer guidance on how to produce Red/Green/Blue composites are at http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/webapps/satrgb/overview.html.  This talk will briefly discuss highlights from both websites, and suggest ways the applications can be used to educate forecasters and the general public.