The International H2O Project (IHOP) was conducted in the Southern Great Plains region from May 13 - June 25, 2002. Two of the primary goals for the program were to measure water vapor variability at high temporal/spatial resolution and to study the mechanisms for convective initiation.

In anticipation for the IHOP research program, stability indices and precipitable water were derived from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite sounders at Single Field of View (SFOV) (approximately 10 km) spatial resolution every hour at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. In addition to calculating GOES sounder derived products at higher spatial resolution, GOES-11 was activated by NESDIS for part of the IHOP campaign doubling the sounder time resolution to 30 minutes and providing a near vertical scanning position over the IHOP domain.