19990729: GOES8-IR imagery interpretation

>From: "Coral P. Fernandez-Illescas" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Princeton
>Keywords: 199907291613.KAA05663 McIDAS

Coral,

Sorry I was unable to get to your inquiry before today, but I just
finished presenting our McIDAS training workshop and getting the next
release of McIDAS-X (7.6) and ldm-mcidas (7.6.0) out of the door.

>I have processed GOES8-IR, channel 4, imagery using McIdas. I have used
>the command axform on each area and this is what I get:
>
>
>AXFORM 8101 8101B FTYPE=BIN UNIT=ALL NO.COLS=652 NO.ROWS=460 Space Science
>& Engineering Center
>                      University of Wisconsin - Madison
>             Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS)
>                                                                              
>   
>  Satellite:  SSEC ID Number: 70
>  Image Date:  3 JUL 97 (YYDDD=97184)  Image Start Time: 11:15:00 GMT
>                                                                              
>   
>                              IMAGE COORDINATES
>   Start Line Start Element Line Resolution Element Resolution
>       3749 11093 4 4
>                                                                              
>   
>                                 IMAGE FILE(S)
>  File Name Parameter Band Lines Elements Element Format Scale
> ------------ ------------ ---- ------- -------- ------------------------
>-----
> 8101B.HDR Header NA ASCII (80 Characters)
> 8101B.001 Raw Sensor 4 460 652 Integer (16 bit) 1
> 8101B.002 Radiance 4 460 652 Long Integer (32 bit) 1000
> 8101B.003 Temperature 4 460 652 Integer (16 bit) 10
> 8101B.004 Brightness 4 460 652 Short Integer (8 bit) 1
>                                                                              
>   
>                 SSEC NAVIGATION BLOCK (All nonzero entries)

OK.

>I am not sure I know what kind of temperature I am obtaing when using
>axform on the channel4 imagery.

This is thermal emission from the 10.7 um channel.

>Also I believe that I would need channel 5
>information also to be able to estimate surface temperature using an
>split-window approach.

Perhaps.

>What would be the way for me to obtain surface
>temperature from the GOES8-IR iamgery that I have and/or channel 5? Your
>help would be extremely useful. Thanks you very much,

Since we don't profess to be experts at satellite imagery interpretation,
you would probably get more information on the sorts of things you can
do with your imagery from the tutorials that Cooperative Institute
for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) makes available on the web.

Please look through the information in:

CIRA Homepage
http://www.cira.colostate.edu/
  NOAA-NESDIS RAMM Team 

     advanced use of the GOES Imager
     http://www.cira.colostate.edu/ramm/advimgry/advimgap.htm

     3.9 micrometer imaging channel
     http://www.cira.colostate.edu/ramm/goes39/cover.htm
 
to see if their tutorials helps you to determine the surface temperature
information you looking for.  If this does not help, please let me
know so I can try to find some other web resources for you (like
the NOAA satellite pages).

Tom Yoksas