GOES-17 Mode 3 Cooling Timeline Operations

April 3, 2020

 2 minute read

Background

From April 9 through May 1 from 0600 to 1200 UTC each day, NESDIS will conduct a Mode 3 Cooling Timeline for the GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) to mitigate the number of saturated images resulting from the loop heat pipe (LHP) temperature regulation anomaly. This coincides with the predicted GOES-17 ABI focal plane temperature of 100 K or greater.

 

What happens during the Mode 3 Cooling Timeline?

Full Disk imagery will be produced every fifteen minutes with timestamps of HH:00, HH:15, HH:30, and HH:45 for each hour from 0600 to 1200 UTC (with HH:00 representing data collected from HH:00 through HH:15 and HH:15 representing data collected from HH:15 through HH:30, etc.).  In addition to the Full Disk imagery, there will also be Alaska sector and Hawaii sector imagery, timestamped the same as the Full Disk imagery, since they are extracted from the Full Disk scan.

There will be no West CONUS (i.e. PACUS) imagery produced by GOES-17. Forecasters using AWIPS from a site receiving data via the SBN have the option of Full Disk, Alaska, Hawaii, or Mesoscale sectors from the Satellite menu during this time.  Also, note that Full Disk imagery distributed over the SBN has always been degraded to 6 km resolution due to bandwidth restrictions, and is not the full resolution that CONUS forecasters are accustomed to seeing while using the West CONUS domain.

 

How does this impact the Mesoscale sector?

There will be two Mesoscale sectors during the Mode 3 Cooling Timeline, with each Meso refreshing every 2 minutes, rather than the usual one-minute tempo.  These sectors will remain requestable through the mesoscale domain request process, with their usual default positions centered over California and Alaska.  

Regarding the GOES-17 derived products that are available via AWIPS Data Delivery, products will be produced for both the Full Disk and Mesoscale sectors, however, they may have varied degradation during the cooling timeline and for up to 30 minutes after nominal Mode 6 resumes.  This is a total time of 6.5 hours that they will be potentially affected, from 0600 to 1230 UTC each day.

 

What about the GLM sensor?

The GLM sensor on GOES-17 will operate as normal and is not affected by the Mode 3 Cooling Timeline.  Space weather sensors will also be unaffected.

At the conclusion of the Mode 3 Cooling Timeline each day at 1200 UTC, GOES-17 will return to its usual operating mode of ten-minute Full Disk imagery, five-minute West CONUS imagery, and two one-minute Mesoscale sectors (Mode 6).

 

What happens if there is a Critical Weather Day?

The GOES-17 ABI Mode 3 cooling timeline implementation is planned to occur despite any Critical Weather Day declaration. 

 

Questions?

If you have any questions about what to expect, the fastest way to contact us is through NWSChat by joining the “towr-s” group.