The NOAA/NESDIS Office of Research and Applications produces a large suite of mostly satellite-derived products that are made available to the environmental community via a number of Internet Web pages. Many of these products have direct applicability to aviation users. Some of the products are operationally available from other sources and are undergoing modifications or upgrades, but many products are experimental, and not available by any other means. Most of the image products are derived from multi-spectral data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) imager or sounder. The sounder-derived products use numerical prediction model data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) ETA model for first guess initialization. This paper will describe some of these products and show how they are displayed for Web access.
The products available and the data used in creating them are: (1) nighttime Fog and Low Cloud imagery (GOES imager bands 2 (3.9 um) and 4 (10.7 um)), (2) Volcanic Ash or Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) depiction (GOES imager bands 2, 4, 5 (12.0 um) and RTOVS sounder channels), (3) Aircraft Icing (GOES imager bands 1 (0.6 um visible), 2, 4, 5), (4) model-derived high altitude Clear-Air Turbulence (CAT) Risk, (5) Microburst Potential (GOES sounder retrieval data at standard pressure levels, ETA model first guess), (6) Cloud Drift and Water Vapor Winds (GOES bands 1, 3 (6.7 um water vapor)and 4, ETA model first guess), (7) atmospheric temperature-moisture Sounder Profiles (GOES sounder retrievals, ETA model first guess), and (8) Satellite Cloud Products (SCP) (clouds above 12,000 ft in support of Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) sites) (GOES sounder image data, ETA model first guess).
These products are usually available hourly, except for winds (3 hourly), clear- air turbulence risk (12-hourly), and SO2 (daily composite. Gaps in product availability may be due to temporary instrument shutdowns, workstation outages, missing ancillary data, or software problems. Because the workstations that produce the products are non-operational, problems that occur during the weekends are usually not corrected until Monday morning. Many of the Web pages have 24 hour archives to retrieve the previous day's products. As with any experimental products, they may be modified at any time to incorporate new techniques or algorithms, or to provide improved appearance or legibility