April News

Updated April 10, 2024

Jump to:

• TOWRPro v25 Coming April 25

• NOAA-20 Orbit Shift Complete

• NOAA-21 NUCAPS Coming in May

• Himawari-9 Rainfall Rate Now Available to Pacific Region

• Update to GOES Aerosol Detection Dust and Smoke Product

• ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)

• OceanSat-3 Ocean Surface Wind Vectors

• Obsolete ASOS SCP Stations to be Removed

• GOES-U Preparations

Recent Updates

TOWRPro v25 Coming April 25

Updates to the TOWR-S RPM and AWIPS Pre-Processor (APP) are being bundled and deployed as TOWRPro v25, beginning April 25. Changes include, but are not limited to:

• Support for new products in AWIPS
  • GOES-19 L2s & Gridded GLM
  • ABI Flood Maps
  • OSCAT-3 Scatterometer Wind Vectors
  • SAR winds (Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic)
• AWIPS configuration changes
  • Increased max range of NESDIS Snowfall rate colormap
  • Support for GOES-R Storage Slot
• CAVE menu entries
  • Distinguish Metop-C vs. NOAA-21 NUCAPS

More details will be presented at the Satellite Book Club on April 25. Contact Lee Byerle, Emily Maddox, or John Evans with questions.

NOAA-20 Orbit Shift Complete

In late March, NOAA-21 was designated the primary satellite in the JPSS constellation, with NOAA-20 now the secondary satellite. NOAA-20’s orbit was then rephased to be diametrically opposite NOAA-21. As of April 4, 2024, the maneuver is complete and all products are approved for operational use. More information is available via OSPO.

NOAA-21 NUCAPS Coming in May

NUCAPS soundings from the NOAA-21 satellite are expected to become available to AWIPS via the SBN on or after May 9, 2024. More information is available via the Service Change Notice SCN24-34, which will be updated for the new release date. NOAA-21 NUCAPS soundings will provide insight into the early-afternoon pre-convective environment, complementing the mid-morning soundings of the Metop-C satellite (see below). (NOAA-20 follows NOAA-21 in orbit about 50 minutes later.)

Himawari-9 Rainfall Rate Now Available to Pacific Region

The TOWR-S team worked with NESDIS to provide several Himawari-9 L2 derived products to the Pacific Region via LDM - including Derived Motion Winds; Sea Surface Temperature; and Cloud Height, Pressure, Temperature, Phase, Mask, and Optical Depth. The final product to become available to Pacific Region AWIPS sites was Rain Rate / Quantitative Precipitation Estimate, as of March 27, 2024. More information is available via OSPO.

Image caption: Full Disk Himawari-9 RainRate/QPE in AWIPS.

Update to GOES Aerosol Detection Dust and Smoke Product

The GOES Aerosol Detection Dust and Smoke product will be updated on April 16. This update will require a configuration patch to view the product. The patch will be included in TOWRPro v25 (see above), though TOWR-S is offering interim patches for sites who request them. If you would like the v24 patch, please contact Tristan Klintworth at tristan.klintworth@noaa.gov.

ICYMI

CIRA GeoColor and 5-min GLM

As of March 18, the LDM is no longer distributing CIRA GeoColor imagery from GOES ABI nor 5-minute flash counts from the GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), as the AWIPS Pre-Processor (APP) computes these products at each site. As a result, about 1 terabyte of data on the NWS regional LDM is being saved each day. Sites with TOWR-S RPM v24 and the APP installed have seen no disruption of data.

NUCAPS from Metop-C Now Available

NUCAPS atmospheric soundings from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) aboard the European Metop-C satellite became available in AWIPS via SBN on March 11, 2024, at 12:44Z. See SCN24-14 for details. Metop-C NUCAPS soundings from mid-morning overpasses will complement NOAA-21's early-afternoon NUCAPS soundings (see above), helping to characterize each day's pre-convective environment.

Overlay of Metop-C NUCAPS with NOAA-20 NUCAPS on April 1.

GOES-West Fog & Low Stratus Product for Alaska Now Available

TOWR-S worked with NESDIS to develop a new Fog & Low Stratus product, derived from GOES-West observations, covering the Alaska sector. NESDIS made this product available as of March 14; NCF is now sending it to Alaska AWIPS sites via LDM. Like its CONUS-sector counterpart (received by all AWIPS users via the SBN), this product estimates fog depth and the probability of reduced aviation visibility (Marginal Visual Flight Rules, Instrument Flight Rules, and Low Instrument Flight Rules) - as summarized in the FLS Dataset Guide. The Alaska sector is extracted from the Full Disk FLS product every 10 minutes.

Image caption: GOES-West Fog Probability for Alaska on Mar 15, 20:10Z.

TOWR-S Quarterly Update

Each quarter, the TOWR-S Team and the NWS Office of Observations review recent and upcoming satellite data products, services, and resources supporting forecast operations. The most recent presentation was given on March 29, 2024. The slides are available on VLab. The next quarterly update is tentatively scheduled for June 28, 2024.

OceanSat-3 Ocean Surface Wind Vectors

The TOWR-S team has been working with NESDIS to produce AWIPS-compatible Ocean Wind Vectors from the OSCAT-3 scatterometer aboard the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)'s OceanSat-3 (EOS-6) satellite. Later this spring, we intend to test a pre-operational product with a few NWS sites, using AWIPS configurations coming in TOWRPro v25 (see above). In the fall, an operational version of this product may go on the SBN for use by all AWIPS sites. OSCAT-3 ocean winds will fill the observational gap left when ISRO's SCATSAT scatterometer ceased operating in February 2021; and it will maintain dual-satellite coverage of ocean wind vectors when the Metop-B satellite (with ASCAT ocean winds) ceases operations.

Obsolete ASOS SCP Stations to be Removed

Effective June 2, 2024, 149 obsolete station identifiers and stations no longer in operation will be removed from the SCP station lists. The stations to be removed are listed here, with suggested alternate stations or identifiers.

Many suggested alternate stations are just a new or corrected identifier for the same station; especially where the distance is only a few km and the location names are similar.

More information can be found in SCN24-37, and in the Dataset Guide.

GOES-U Preparations

GOES-U, the fourth and final satellite in the GOES-R series, is due to launch on or after June 25, 2024. Preparations for GOES-U are underway, with testing continuing throughout 2024. After various phases of Post-Launch Testing, the GOES-U satellite is expected to begin operation (as GOES-19) in Spring 2025, replacing GOES-16 in the GOES-East role at Longitude 75.2°W. It will carry the same instrument suite as GOES-16, plus a new solar Compact CORonagraph (CCOR). The TOWR-S team has participated in two in-depth test events using simulated GOES-19 data, and confirmed the AWIPS configurations needed for a seamless transition from GOES-16 to GOES-19.