Current Status of the GOES-R Rainfall Rate Product

The launch of GOES-16 greatly expands the ability to observe the Western Hemisphere from geostationary orbit. The GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) provides more than 3 times as many spectral bands and a 75% reduction in footprint size compared to the current GOES Imager, which benefits many applications including rainfall rate estimation. The GOES-R Rainfall Rate algorithm uses information from multiple IR bands on the ABI and is calibrated against microwave-derived rain rates to optimize accuracy. The Rainfall Rate / Quantitative Precipitation Estimate (QPE) product provides estimates of rainfall every 15 minutes at the full spatial IR resolution of GOES-16 (2 km at nadir) with a production latency of less than 5 minutes. This presentation will give the current status of the product, describe the results of post-launch validation thus far, and detail planned algorithm improvements in response to these findings.