Introducing Atmospheric Motion Vectors Derived from the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI)

The GOES-16 satellite was successfully launched on November 19, 2016. The Advanced Baseline Imager instrument data and the Level 1B products were declared provisionally operational on June 1, 2017. This paper introduces the GOES-16 derived motion winds product derived from measurements taken from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). More specifically, image triplets involving ABI bands 2 (0.64um), 7 (3.9um), 8 (6.2um), 9 6.9um), 10 (7.3um), and 14 (11.2um) over the Full Disk, CONUS, and Mesoscale sectors are used to identify and track cloud or moisture features to arrive at estimates of atmospheric motion. The higher spatial and temporal resolution of the ABI imagery enables more winds to be produced while also capturing motion at smaller scales. A new nested tracking algorithm, designed and developed in advance of the launch of GOES-16, captures the dominant motion in each target scene and minimizes the slow speed bias typically observed in winds derived at upper levels of the atmosphere. Heights assigned to derived winds are achieved through judicious use of cloud-top heights produced upstream of the winds algorithm. Intensive validation of the GOES-16 wind product has been ongoing during the Post-Launch Test (PLT) period and is aimed at characterizing the performance of the wind product relative to available reference/ground truth wind measurements from rawinsondes and commercial aircraft. Examples of the GOES-16 wind product and validation results obtained from the PLT period will be presented and discussed.