20010608: METEOSAT-7 AREA files available by FTP at Marshall Space Flight Center

>From: Unidata Support <address@hidden>
>Organization: Plymouth State
>Keywords: 200106081245.f58CjFp25719 NOAAPORT channel 4 METEOSAT

Christian and Jim,

I found an FTPable repository of METEOSAT-7 images at the Marshall Space
Flight Center (MSFC) of NASA:

user: anonymous
pass: your full email address
machine: cyclone.msfc.nasa.gov
directory: Weather/METEOSAT-7/McIDAS_areas/ir1|ir2|vis

When you get to the site, you will notice that there is data from:

Platform       Country      McIDAS AREA?    Bands
--------------+------------+---------------+------------------------------
FY-2           China        NO
GMS-5          Japan        YES             ir1, ir2, ir3, vis
GOES-10        US           YES             ir2, ir3, ir4, ir5, vis
GOES-8         US           YES             ir2, ir3, ir4, ir5, vis, local
METEOSAT-7     Europe       YES             ir1, ir2, vis

All imagery is available in McIDAS AREA file format (and compressed)
except that from FY-2.  Unfortunately, the GOES VIS images (from both
-10 and -8) are 4 km in resolution.

I just FTPed one of the GOES-10 VIS images and created a McIDAS ADDE
dataset to hold/access it.  Here is the output from the McIDAS IMGLIST
command:

IMGLIST MSFC/GW-VIS FORM=EXP
Image file directory listing for:MSFC/GW-VIS
 Pos Satellite/         Date       Time      Center      Res (km)   Image_Size
     sensor                                 Lat  Lon    Lat   Lon
 --- -------------  ------------  --------  ---- ----  ----- ----- ------------
   1  G-10 IMG       8 JUN 01159  17:00:00    26  140
    Band: 1   0.65 um Visible - Cloud Cover             4.77  2.35  1357 x 3312
     proj:    0 created: 2001159 175511  memo:
     type:GVAR     cal type:RAW
     offsets:  data=    2816 navigation=  256 calibration=    0 auxillary=    0
     doc length:   0   cal length:   0   lev length:   0 PREFIX=   0
     valcod:          0 zcor:  1 avg-smp: A
     lcor: 2525  ecor:  7845  bytes per pixel: 2  ss: 74
     Resolution Factors (base=1):   Line=    4.0   Element=    4.0
IMGLIST: done

From the listing, you can see that the images are 10-bit (2 bytes per
pixel) and are oversampled in the element dimension (Res of 4.77 for
Lat but 2.35 for Lon).  McIDAS handles these images with no problem,
but applications like GEMPAK and WXP will not be able to handle them
(actually, I am not sure about WXP).

These images could be FTPed to one's home system and then made
available to oneself and the Unidata community through McIDAS ADDE.
Are either/both of you interested in providing this service to the
Unidata community?

I have tried several times in the past to get ADDE access to these
images for the Unidata community, but I never succeeded.  Given the
possibility of GMS and FY-2, I think that I will make another run at
getting the access.

Tom Yoksas