July Newsletter

Updated July 21, 2025                                                 

July News

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Recent Updates

 

Severe Weather and Hurricane Symposium on July 16

NOAA’s Satellite Applications symposium series continued this July 16th, with a conference focused on Severe Weather and Hurricane Applications. The symposium was held in College Park and additionally available virtually through Google Meet. The satellite symposium included informative presentations, covering subjects from long term GEO and LEO planning, to the experience of downstream commercial users. Briefing materials will be posted by NESDIS in the upcoming weeks.
Interested scientists can find more information on the  symposium page.  Please visit the GeoXO Events website for more information on other exciting events.

 

GOSAT-GW Launched on June 28

GOSAT-GW (Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle) was successfully launched on June 28 as the third mission in the GOSAT series. GOSAT-GW follows a sun-synchronous orbit and has an expected seven year operational life. The satellite carries two instruments, an Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 3 (AMSR-3) and a Total Anthropogenic and Natural Emissions Mapping Spectrometer 3 (TANSO-3).
The TOWR-S team will be working to bring this valuable data from GOSAT-GW to the field as it becomes operational in 2026 and replaces GCOM-W1 products.

 

MRMS Software Update to include GOES-19 ProbSevere

MRMS v12.3 is set to go live on IDP/PROD July 21. This version of MRMS (Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor) will include GOES-19 ProbSevere. ProbSevere is an operational short-term forecasting subsystem within MRMS specialized for severe hazard probabilities. This enhancement provides more precise, timely, and accessible information, ultimately improving public safety and preparedness. The integration of GOES-19 data offers higher resolution and faster updates for improved severe weather insights. MRMS v12.3 will allow for access to GOES-19 ProbSevere in AWIPS from the MRMS pull down menu.

The CIMSS ProbSevere page remains a resource to view ProbSevere data outside of the AWIPS environment.

 

TOWR-S Quarterly Update on August 22

Each quarter, the TOWR-S Team and the NWS Office of Observations review recent and upcoming satellite data products, services, and resources that play a vital role in supporting forecast operations. The next update meeting will be on August 22. This update meeting presents an opportunity for the NWS community to stay informed and ask any questions about the latest developments.

All past presentation slides are available on VLab including the last update held on April 25. Interested members of the NOAA community can contact Stuti Deshpande or Derek Van Pelt to register for future update meetings.

 

AWIPS Software Update Now Available

Updates to the TOWR-S RPM and AWIPS Pre-Processor (APP) are now packaged together as TOWRpro v25 for Weather Forecast Offices and River Forecast Centers. Thank you to the >140  sites who have installed the latest version! Staff at the remaining sites are invited to install the software using this procedure. More details about what the software package entails are found here.

The next version, TOWRPro v26, is in early testing with plans for release in October 2025.  Features so far include the GOES Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) Dust RGB, GPROF (polar) surface precipitation rates (requested by Alaska Region),  and reference procedure bundles for various common mission applications. TOWRPro v26 will also be available for stand-alone NWS cloud instances supporting IMETs/CWSUs.

Please visit the #towr-s Slack channel or contact the TOWR-S Team with questions.

 

NWS Satellite Readiness Roadmap Activities

The last 6 months of collaboration across NWS and NESDIS resulted in a preliminary roadmap for satellite readiness activities which was briefed to NWS Leadership and the NASA and NOAA Agency-level Program Management Council (APMC) (see slides). 

The next steps for the NWS Satellite Readiness Project will focus on planning NWS satellite readiness activities for future satellite missions (e.g. description of the activities (Work Breakdown Structure), schedule, cost estimates, roles and responsibilities, risk assessment) with more precision and detail. The project will also describe the characteristics of the proposed systems from the perspective of the intended users, outlining how the systems will be operated and used, and communicating key features and functionalities to stakeholders. Development of a NWS Satellite Readiness Project Plan integrating the various infrastructure activities into a master plan will enhance coordination, reduce conflicts, improve decision-making, and provide a more comprehensive vision for the project (i.e. NWS Satellite Readiness). This project will provide better description of the elements of the systems (end to end from NESDIS to NWS) for both modeling and forecasting systems that distribute, ingest, process, store, and display satellite products and how the systems will be operated and used. The result will allow for development of a corresponding satellite-to-user CONOPS for satellite data exploitation.

Please contact Fawaz Al-Mtwali with any questions regarding the Roadmap.

ICYMI

 

Termination of POES Products following June 16

Users are advised to discontinue use of all POES data immediately. NOAA-15 and NOAA-19 data have not been made available since Jun 16. Though the standard broadcast of products will continue for End of Life services, the data may not be suitable for any operation use.
Additionally, NOAA-18 was successfully decommissioned on June 6 as part of a responsible disposal process due to limitations of the S-band transmitter as of May 31. NOAA-18 launched in May 2005. Despite a mission design life of 3-5 years, its mission life lasted beyond 20 years.

Please refer to the  contact OSPO Suspension Notification or a list of POES products to be discontinued and refer to the  OSPO NOAA-18 Decommissioning Message for more information. Users can direct further questions to User Services or Derek Van Pelt.

 

Migration of NDE Products on June 26

Several NESDIS Data Exploitation (NDE) Products were migrated to the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF) on June 26. Please refer to the OSPO Termination Notification for a list of discontinued products. This is in line with the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF) migration to the cloud. The production change should result in no change to downstream NWS users. 


Please contact Derek Van Pelt if any anomalies are noticed with these products.

Looking Ahead

OSCAT Winds Anticipated on SBN this Winter

OSCAT Winds data implementation in the NESDIS cloud (NCCF) is expected to begin operational delivery on or around November 2025. 
The latest TOWRpro version provides a migrational (non-operational) data flow path from a NESDIS STAR server through to NWS where the data can be ingested and displayed as data is available. The TOWRpro enhancement will also handle the product when the OSCAT data flow is cutover from the STAR server to PDA distribution.

Reach out to the TOWR-S Team with any questions.

 

Commercial Satellite Data
NWS continues to work with the NESDIS Commercial Data Program (CDP) on identifying sources of satellite-based commercial data for evaluation and eventual integration into NWS operations. Beginning with next month’s newsletter, we will include more-specific information about ongoing and future satellite data buys. 

Please contact the TOWR-S Team with questions.