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College of DuPage Meteorology Dept.
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Enjoy this page? Unidata made it possible!

The imagery on this page is generated with Unidata's McIDAS-X software package, on server hardware obtained through Unidata's 2017 Equipment Award. The Equipment Award is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It is because of these tools and resources that we are able to bring this data to you. Unidata empowers educational institutions like ours by providing software, support and grants to further education and research of our planet and atmosphere. To learn more about Unidata, visit them here.

DISCLAIMER:

This is our experimental GOES-EAST data viewer. This page, its features and contents are currently in a phase of rapid and active development. Nothing you see here is final, and is certainly open to suggestion from our users as we move forward. Our primary goal with this page is to try to make the most of what the new GOES-EAST satellite (GOES-R Series) can now offer. For the time being this means providing the full suite of data for every sector (minus a couple exceptions) at higher resolution than our operational page. With time, we plan on adding our "Mapping" and "Mesoscale Analysis" overlays and providing a markedly better mobile experience. We thank you for your support and patience during this process. Enjoy this wonderful new data!

GOES-R Series Satellite FAQ:

What are ABI bands?

The Advanced Baseline Imager (or ABI for short) is one of the instruments on the GOES-R series of satellites. There are 16 ABI bands that each sample a specific region of the light spectrum. They include two visible bands, four near-infrared bands, and ten infrared bands.

Which bands are closest to what I’m used to?

Compared to the previous generation of GOES satellites, ABI 02, or the Visible Red band, samples the same wavelength as legacy visible products. ABI 09, the Mid-Level Water Vapor band, is most like the legacy water vapor band. And ABI 14, the Longwave Infrared Window band, is the closest to the legacy LW-IR band

What ABI bands should I use?

The best answer to this question is really all of them, as they all have their uses. But some bands do have some interesting characteristics. ABI 02 has the highest spatial resolution of all the ABI bands at 500 meters (visible was previously 1km). ABI 07 senses the widest range of temperatures, and among other things is very useful for fire detection. And band 13 often produces cleaner looking images than its more traditional counterpart, band 14. But please use them all, and explore for yourself each band’s strengths and weaknesses.

How often to these products update?

Imagery from the mesoscale regions will update every minute. Occasionally, the two mesoscale regions can be overlapped to produce 30 second imagery. CONUS imagery, which is what the bulk of our sectors use, updates once every five minutes. Full Disk imagery will update every 15 minutes, but it’s possible to have 5 minute updates if the mesoscale regions are turned off.

What are the mesoscale regions?

GOES-16 is capable of having up to two mesoscale scanning regions. The satellite’s ABI will scan each of these regions once per minute, or it can scan one region every 30 seconds. This results in satellite imagery that can update faster than most weather radars! Beyond that, there is no difference in the products themselves between mesoscale imagery and CONUS imagery.

Who determines where the mesoscale regions are?

Not us, though that would be nice. Actually, any National Weather Service (NWS) office or National Center (such as SPC or NHC) can request a mesoscale domain be positioned to sample a specific region or feature of interest. This allows flexibility to have rapid updates for severe weather, fire weather, hurricanes and other events or occurrences. An SPC moderate or high risk will typically take priority over most other things. If there are no active requests, the default position for Mesoscale-1 is over the Northeastern US, with Mesoscale-2 over the Ohio and Tennessee River Valleys. Eventually, GOES-17 will provide two additional mesoscale regions. Visit this link for more information: https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/23225

Where can I learn more about the ABI bands?

Here are a few links you may find useful:

• https://www.goes-r.gov/education/docs/Factsheet_ABI.pdf
• https://www.goes-r.gov/education/ABI-bands-quick-info.html
• https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00230.1

And in general, the goes-r.gov site is loaded with information and has many resources that help explain the GOES-R series of satellites.

What other data from GOES-16 will you offer?

This is a great question, and sadly we don’t really know. Right now we have access to data for the ABI bands and derived products, but that’s it. While we want to visualize everything we can, we do not currently have access to data from the other instruments (including GLM, SUVI, SEISS, MAG and EXIS data). We haven’t gotten official word on how or if this data will be made available to us, so we can’t answer what other instruments we’ll be able to visualize data for.

Where did your derived products go?

Since the temporary outage during the GOES-16 drift to GOES-East, we have completely redone how we make our imagery. This was to allow us to make more products for more sectors. While we have not gotten to making any derived products yet, they are very much on our to-do list. Stay tuned, we will offer derived products as soon as we can.

I think I found a problem with your page or imagery, how can I tell you about it?

If you think you’ve found a bug we’d love to know about it. Please contact us here and describe what’s broken, the more detail the better.

ABI Band #9 - Mid-Level Water Vapor
Band Type:	Infrared
Spatial Resolution:	2km
Approximate Central Wavelength:	6.9 μm
Temporal Usage:	Night and Day
ABI 9 is the second of the three water vapor bands available from GOES-R Series satellites. It has similar applications to ABI 8 (UL WV) but can also aide in mid-latitude storm forecasting, severe weather analysis (e.g. the detection of shortwaves), and mid-level moisture estimation. Additionally, in combination with the other two water vapor bands, this data can be ingested by numerical weather models to improve forecasts by better approximating intial conditions of the atmosphere at large scales.