Developing Himawari-8 Near Realtime System at NSMC/CMA

Himawari-8 (H8), the next-generation GEO satellite operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), was successfully launched on 7 October 2014. Its installed systems include a 16-band AHI with spatial resolution from 0.5 km (visible band at 0.64 μm) to 2.0 km (infrared band) and full-disk observation frequency of 10 minutes. The AHI near real-time (NRT) observation data were released freely by JMA on 7 July 2015. For a better application of H8 data, FengYun 4 (FY-4) satellite Algorithm Working Group (AWG) have used the Fengyun Geostationary (GEO) algorithm testbed for imager (FYGAT-I) they develop as a kernel module to develop a Near Realtime (NRT) Processing System for Himawari-8 at National Satellite Meteorological Center (NSMC), CMA. Currently, about 30 Level-2 science products were generated by this NRT system for providing a better service to CMA forecasters and others.