TOWR-S RPM Communications - Total Operational Weather Readiness - Satellites (TOWR-S)
GOES-16 AWIPS RPM August 2017 Release Newsletter
By: the NWS Office of Observations' Total Operational Weather Readiness - Satellites (TOWR-S) Team
The NCF has made the August version version of the GOES-16 RPM available in the AWIPS repository, and installation instructions are here.
RPM Highlights
The TOWR-S team has been working with the NWS/NESDIS Satellite Enhancement Team (SET) on a weekly basis to bring these new AWIPS satellite improvements to you. Three SOOs, Frank Alsheimer (CAE), Mike Stavish (MFR) and Brian Carcione (HUN) participate regularly with the SET. Their leadership guides the team to make changes to AWIPS configurations files that allow NWS forecasters to best utilize GOES-16 data. Thanks to their insight, we offer to you the following AWIPS enhancements in the August 2017 version of the RPM:
1. The “Day Land Cloud Convection" RGB has been renamed "Day Cloud Convection." Some modifications to the RGB have also been applied, including:
a) Gamma values can now range up to 1.7 (could only range up to 1.0 before)
b) The blue values of the RGB has been inverted (the range is 323 - 210 K, this is to make it look a bit less blue)
c) The red and green max values of the RGB have been changed from 120% to 100%
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2. The "Day Cloud Phase" RGB has been renamed the 'Day Cloud Phase Distinction" RGB in order to improve consistency with the internationally recognized JMA algorithm.
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3. Removed the "Icing" RGB from the "Old RGBs" sub-menu. This is because it is an exact duplicate of the "Day Land Cloud Simple" RGB.
4. Removed the "Simple Nighttime Microphysics" RGB. This is because it is essentially a duplicate of the existing "Advanced Nighttime Microphysics" RGB.
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5. Removed the "Day Ocean Cloud Convection" RGB. This is because the "Day Cloud Convection" RGB essentially does the same thing.
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6) Modified the style rule for the Fire Detection Algorithm to have a maximum value of 4 million. This will allow for better detection of smaller fires.
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7) Modified the visible channel (Channel 2) reflectance maximum value to 118 (up from 100). This change will work in conjunction with the missing pixel fix that is forthcoming from NESDIS.
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For the sake of continuity, it is not recommended that sites skip these RPM updates.
That's all for this month!
If you have issues installing the RPM, please contact the NCF.
If you have any questions or feedback about the RPM contents, please contact Eric Guillot at NWS HQ at eric.guillot@noaa.gov or 301-427-9250.
See you in October!