Tuesday, 11 January 2005: 8:50 AM
ABI [Advanced Baseline Imager]
The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), designated to be one of the instruments on future Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), will introduce a new era in environmental remote sensing. As with the current GOES Imager, the ABI will be used for a wide range of weather, oceanographic, climate, and environmental applications. The ABI will improve over the existing GOES Imager with more spectral bands, faster imaging, higher spatial resolution, nominally improving from 4 to 2 km for the infrared bands and 1 to 0.5 km for the 0.64 um visible band. There will be an increase of the coverage rate leading to full disk scans at least every 15 minutes. The ABI expands from five spectral bands on the current GOES imagers to 16 spectral bands in the visible, near-infrared and infrared spectral regions. The purpose of these bands will be summarized with regard to operational forecasts. Every product that is being produced from the current GOES Imager will be improved with data from the ABI, plus there will be a host of new products possible. For example, ABI will provide cloud-top phase/particle size information, and much-improved aerosol and smoke detection for air quality monitoring and forecasts. While the ABI represents an exciting expansion in geostationary remote sensing capabilities, it will not be operating alone. Several products can be improved when using high spatial resolution imager data with co-located high-spectral resolution measurements.
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