GOES-16: Year One

After one year of testing, imagery and derived products from the 16^th Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-16) are becoming operational, provided to users on a realtime basis with many of the kinks and bugs worked out. The new Advanced Baseline Imagers (ABIs) on GOES-16 and its successors are much improved in terms of temporal, spectral, and spatial resolution, providing imagery and derived product data over thunderstorms, hurricanes, fires, and other events as rapidly as every 30 seconds. GOES-16 sees three times as many wavelengths at four times the spatial resolution and five times faster than the seven previous GOES, which ran a series of imagers first launched in 1994. The additional wavelengths and higher resolution in time and space allow for better monitoring of severe storms, water vapor, dust and aerosols, and other phenomenon. GOES-16’s derived products include cloud properties and masks, CAPE and other stability indices, satellite-derived winds, fire detection, and simulated natural color imagery. Interesting phenomenon, in some cases never seen by satellite before, will be showcased through animations of imagery and derived products. The science behind the imagery and the validation of the new data will be discussed.