[McIDAS #SIP-623086]: GOES-16 Color Imagaes

Hi Fred,

re:
> The new GOES-16 satellite is now the operational GOES-east satellite.

Not to be nitpicky, but GOES-13 won't be christened as GOES-East until the 18th.

re:
> The web page
> http://wx.erau.edu/erau_sat/ has been updated to include the new satellite 
> data.  The
> day/night and wiggle 3-D images are now in color.  During the day, 3 visible 
> channels
> are combined into a true color image.  The green channel is generated by a 
> weighted
> average ( .29 .29 and .33)  for bands 1, 2 & 3.  The red & green channels are 
> brightness
> normalized, and the blue channel also has a Rayleigh scattering correction in 
> addition
> to the brightness normalization.    At night a dark blue is added for the 
> water areas
> in the blue channel and a green for the land areas in the green channel.  At 
> night the
> low clouds are generated from the band 13 (IR)- band 7 (3.9 micron near IR) 
> difference.
> The higher clouds are generated from the bands 13-16 difference.   The light 
> blue color
> is still the high clouds above 18,000 feet.

Very nice!

re:
> The GOES-west satellite images are also shown in color (even though the 
> satellite has
> only one visible channel) by using the same addition of blue for dark areas 
> over water
> and green for the dark areas over land to make blue and green channels.  The 
> daytime
> visible selection on the web page provides a black and white image of the red 
> (band 2)
> channel.  The image gets dark at night.  The infrared (band 13) and water 
> vapor (band 9)
> image displays are essentially the same as in prior satellites.  The VIS 3-D 
> is a
> day/night image which requires red/cyan 3D anaglyph glasses to see the 
> heights.  The 3D
> images correct the IR temperature for thin cirrus by doing a correlation 
> between the IR
> and water vapor images, and replacing the IR cloud temperature with the water 
> vapor
> temperature.   The wiggle 3-D images do not require any special glasses for 
> viewing.
> The higher clouds wiggle more than the lower clouds, giving a perception of 
> depth.
> The wiggle image are in color.

Very good.

re:
> The selection of the U.S. at the top of the US image selections, and the WHEM 
> at the
> top of the hemispheric image selections will provide a 3000x5000 roamable 
> image.  I had
> wanted a larger roamable frame, but the MAP program would not work correctly 
> for larger
> frames.

If it is not working in the full v2017/v2017a release, I want to know about it
since part of the SSEC code modifications in their v2017.2 release was to 
support
much larger frames.

re:
> Use the slider bars at the side and bottom of your browser to move around in
> these large images.  All of the rest of the images are the same 640x960 size 
> as before.
> 
> For the hemispheric image selections, the volcanic ash algorithm for the 
> GOES-east has
> been changed to using 3 infrared channels (band 13-15 and band 13-11).  The 
> algorithm is
> not fully verified yet. The convective diagnostic is currently solely a 
> satellite product
> (convective areas are where IR and WV temperatures are within 1 degree of 
> each other).
> The previous product used a global K index in conjunction with the satellite 
> product.
> This was taken out for the time being until a more reliable method of 
> accessing global
> model data is implemented. Hence some of the convective areas (in red) at high
> latitudes may just be thick synoptic clouds.

Nice.

re:
> If you are interested in any of the locally developed code (such as the 
> brightness
> normalization, Rayleigh scattering correction, correlation of channels, cloud 
> heights,
> etc.) let me know.

I am, and I think that SSEC will be also.

FYI: one of the biggest changes in SSEC McIDAS-X v2017.2 that is replicated in
Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD v2017 is the addition of an automatic stretch for certain
bands of certain satellites.  I have replicated the SSEC description of the
new MCSTRETCH environment in the Unidata v2017 release notes:

https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/release_notes.html

This page has a link to a description of MCSTRETCH:

https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/mcstretch/MCSTRETCH.html

re:
> If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions, please contact me.

Quetions:

- Are you/Chris intending (or already have) on upgrading to the non-beta Unidata
  McIDAS-X/-XCD release?

  I strongly recommend that you do!

- Are you willing/interested in publicizing the ERAU web page(s)?

  If yes, a note to address@hidden and possibly address@hidden
  would be in order.

Cheers,

Tom
--
****************************************************************************
Unidata User Support                                    UCAR Unidata Program
(303) 497-8642                                                 P.O. Box 3000
address@hidden                                   Boulder, CO 80307
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unidata HomePage                       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu
****************************************************************************


Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: SIP-623086
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
===================
NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the Unidata 
inquiry tracking system and then made publicly available through the web.  If 
you do not want to have your interactions made available in this way, you must 
let us know in each email you send to us.