Satellite skills and knowledge for operational meteorologist
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This case study treats snow detection with the Cloud Phase RGB.
During 07-10 January 2021, a winter storm produced a significant 30-50 cm snow depth over large parts of Spain. We studied this snow cover over the following ten days in VIIRS Cloud Phase RGB images. The Cloud Phase RGB is a composite image, which will also be available with data from the future Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) imager.
Jason Apke presents a method to derive winds from satellite data and shows some example applications.
The new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R Series Advanced Baseline Imager and similar instruments represent a substantial improvement in the spatial, spectral, temporal, and radiometric resolution of operational space-based imagery for atmospheric sciences. The enhanced resolutions enable the objective derivation of fine-scale brightness motion, or so-called "optical flow" (OF), over a variety of meteorological phenomena with techniques that address the weaknesses of current generation cloud and feature tracking algorithms. The techniques even allow for precise dense OF derivation, or motion retrieval at every image pixel, which has a variety of applications that will be invaluable to satellite remote sensing-based forecasting and research in the future. These applications include Atmospheric Motion Vector fields, temporal brightness interpolation, feature extrapolation, image stereoscopy, and semi-Lagrangian brightness temperature field derivation. As motion is an observable that provides unique context on features observed with an image, OF fields further offer significant new predictors to a variety of objective machine learning and decision-making tools now in development. This presentation will go into detail on how some of these new dense OF techniques are derived and highlight efforts to produce and validate new products. Demonstrations of novel RGBs and their uses for operational forecasting will be overviewed, such as blends of derived speed for inferring shear and cloud-top cooling for inferring vertical growth with clouds in visible satellite imagery. Efforts to validate wind products will also be shown which highlight the strengths and weaknesses of dense OF derivation for satellite remote sensing purposes. Examples of future applications and research will also be covered, including a look into the future of OF derivation with an example 6-sec GOES-17 dataset.
HansPeter Roesli illustrated the impact of wind on clouds by examples taken from satellite imagery.
Vertical and horizontal winds in a moist airmass may generate characteristic cloud patterns. Vice versa specific cloud patterns expose the wind fields behind the scene. The talk illustrates this interplay with imagery from data of operational sun-synchronous and geo-synchronous imaging satellites. It shows cases like gravity waves, undular bores, haboobs, ship tracks or stack plumes.
Ad Stöffelen provides an overview on current wind products and services.
Never before so many ocean wind sensing satellites were available for application in meteorology, oceanography and climate. These satellite ocean winds are continually improved in quality and service. An overview will be provided of the current products and services, with particular focus on their earth coverage, timeliness, quality and on coastal and extreme winds. Furthermore, relevant aspects for application in nowcasting, ocean forcing, climate and NWP data assimilation will be highlighted.
Anu-Maija Sundström gives an overview presentation on AC SAF products and on long-range transport events.
AC SAF provides various satellite observations on atmospheric composition, that are relevant for assessing air quality and climate. In this talk an overview of the AC SAF products is given by introducing practical examples of recent major air quality episodes. The focus will be on long range transport events that are highly affected by prevailing wind conditions.
Valerie-Marie Kumer tals about the challenges of flying in complex terrain.
Flying in complex terrain is challenging as orographic induced turbulence can lead to unexpected loss of aircraft controls. In order to keep aircraft operations as long as possible actable and safe a skilled turbulence forecast is of vital importance. Since turbulence forecasts are highly dependent on model resolution and parameterization schemes, they do not always hit the scores. With the knowledge of general fluid dynamics and observations regions and onset of hazardous conditions can be specified. Let us explore what we can look at to improve our turbulence forecasting skill.
Régis Borde gives an overview on the actual wind products extracted from polar satellites over the world.
Derivation of wind products from polar orbiting satellites has been developed in the 2000’s to populate the high latitude regions where no observation could be obtained from geostationary satellites. Taking advantage of a wider variety of instruments available at Low Earth Orbit, several types of wind information are now produced operationally, and not limited to Polar Regions anymore.
This presentation will give an overview of the actual wind products extracted from polar satellites over the world, and then focus on the EUMETSAT activities which includes the operational production from imagers, the recent development of 3D winds from Hyperspectral instruments, and the preparation of the future Doppler Wind Lidar mission.
Polly Schmederer presents an evaluation of the EXIM product.
With the latest version of EXIM, new NWCSAF products were added to the list of sub-products and a new extrapolation feature, the so-called CTTH filter, was introduced. The CTTH filter allows extrapolating pixels using atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) stemming from the same userdefined layer. This talk presents the value gained by extrapolating the new sub-products with EXIM and the impact CTTH-filter has on the extrapolation of the various sub-products.
Alexander Jann presents the NWC SAF product EXIM, its functionalities and the algorithm.
Extrapolated Imagery (EXIM) is one of EUMETSAT's NWCSAF/GEO products. EXIM kinematically extrapolates satellite imagery and selected NWCSAF products by up to a lead time of 1 hour.
The software developer gives an overview over EXIM's functionalities, the algorithm, challenges faced, and recent developments introduced in the latest version, which is currently under review for being released.
Javier Garcia Pereida presents the NWC SAF product High Resolution Winds and shows application examples.
The NWCSAF/HRW-High Resolution Winds product provides a detailed calculation of Atmospheric Motion Vectors and Trajectories locally and in real time by its users. In this moment, it is able to do this in all regions of the Earth with 5 MSG/Himawari/GOES-R geostationary satellites and 12 NOAA/SNPP/Metop/EOS polar satellites (inside NWC/GEO v2021 and NWC/PPS v2021 software packages).
It is useful in Nowcasting applications, for watch and warning of dangerous wind situations, and monitoring of the general atmospheric flow, small scale circulation and wind singularities. It can also be assimilated in NWP Models and Climate applications, with special interest in its global applicability. In this session, examples will be provided considering all these possibilities.
Izolda Marcinoniene gives a talk on the synoptic background for strong winds in Lithuania.
In Lithuania, very strong winds (≥28m/s) are usually caused by Atlantic cyclones. Fifty-five cases in 173 sites have been registered during the period 1961–2021. Even a few cases with very powerful winds (>40 m/s) were observed. According to statistics, most events occur during the cold season and bring significant damage. Thus, a short summary will be presented. Additionally, the typical cyclone track and synoptic situation will be shown in this presentation.
Cecilia Marcos and Natasa Strelec Mahovic give an overview on the NWC-SAF precipitation products and their applications.
To provide the forecasters with tools for severe weather events monitoring with a suitable spatial and temporal resolution is very important. The NWCSAF project develops several products to make easier forecasters their nowcasting tasks.
The NWCSAF/MSG software package contains two products devoted to precipitation. Precipitating Clouds (PC) product assigns a probability of precipitation occurrence on each SEVIRI pixel. Convective Rainfall Rate (CRR) product estimates rain rates on convective, and stratiform associated to convection, events. The algorithms, on which those products are based, have currently two different approaches.
PC product takes advantage of surface temperatures and of those SEVIRI spectral features which have the highest correlation with precipitation, to construct a Precipitation Index (PI). According to this PI, which has been calibrated against rain gauges, a likelihood of precipitation occurrence is assigned to each SEVIRI pixel. CRR algorithm assigns rain rates to each pixel according to some SEVIRI channel information and some calibration functions, which have been calibrated using radar data. The influences of environmental and orographic effects on the precipitation distribution are taken into account through some corrections that use NWP data. Besides, two new products are included in the NWCSAF/MSG v2013 software package. These products also estimate the probability of precipitation and convective rainfall rates using a common approach, which takes advantage of cloud microphysical properties.
In a second talk, Natasa Strelec-Mahovic will present applications of the NWCSAF Precipitation Products.