October 2021- May 2022
Mike Schmidt, Tom Yoksas
Comment(s):
An effort to establish a new GOES-R downlink facility at the NCAR Marshall field site (just south of Boulder) was slowed by an NSF moratorium on any ground penetrations until an environmental impact assessment has been done for the entire site. Exactly when an environmental impact assessment will be done is currently unknown.
By any measure, GOES-16/17 imagery continues to be very popular in the community!
Background:
In the fall of 2017 we began experiencing significant TI in the GOES-16 signal being received by our 4.5m satellite dish at the NCAR Mesa Lab. An outcome of the collaborations we had with Quorum Communications (the manufacturer of the electronics we use in our GOES-R/S ingest installations) was our moving of the GOES-16 ingest to a 3.8 m satellite dish located at the UCAR FL-2 location. The relocation of GOES-16 ingest required that an additional signal cable be pulled from the satellite dish that was repurposed from GOES GVAR ingest into the 2nd floor FL-2 NCAR/RAL computer room where our ingest electronics are located. The cost of this work was contributed by the UCAR/NCAR networking group.
While the actual source of the TI being experienced at the Mesa Lab could not be pinpointed, the best guess at the time was that the noise being experienced was coming from power lines that lie south and downhill from the Mesa Lab. All of those power lines have since been replaced (by Xcel Energy), so there is a possibility that the TI is now gone. We will be conducting an experiment of re-pointing the dish from GOES-West back to GOES-East to see if the power lines were, in fact, the source of the TI. If the results of the test are positive, meaning the TI is gone, we will leave the dish pointing at GOES-East and resurrect the original plan of installing a GOES-West downlink on the western satellite pad at the Mesa Lab. This experiment will be conducted in conjunction with UWisc/SSEC to minimize potential data loss to the Unidata community.
In the spring, we were given a 3.7m satellite dish that was being excessed by a private company that was relocating their operations. We will use this dish to establish a GOES-R downlink at the NCAR Marshall field site. Even more recently, we were given an additional 3.8m satellite dish that was being replaced by another company in Centennial, CO (on the southern side of Denver). Pending the testing described above, this dish may be installed on the western satellite pad at the Mesa Lab and used for GOES-West data ingestion.
On March 21, 2021 Graeme Martin (UWisconsin/CIMSS) announced the initial release of Gridded Geostationary Lightning Mapper (Gridded GLM) software package:
The software is capable of processing GOES-16 and GOES-17 GLM Level 2+ products in mission standard format, generating a new set of products which have been gridded to the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) 2-km resolution, and are aggregated at one-minute intervals. Spatial extent information that is not readily available in the GLM L2+ data is recovered and used to create the gridded products.
The following products can be produced:
- Minimum Flash Area
- Flash Extent Density
- Total Optical Energy
AWIPS-compatible tiles can optionally be generated, using functionality that was developed within the open source Python SatPy library.
Input GLM L2+ files can be obtained from the CSPP Geo GRB software running at a direct broadcast site, or from NOAA CLASS. Output is in NetCDF4 format.
We intend to implement this software, evaluate the products, and distribute them in the IDD when appropriate.
Gridded Geostationary Lightning Mapper (Gridded GLM) products from Amazon AWS S3
We have obtained access (effort spearheaded by Tiffany Meyer) to Gridded GLM products being created by the NWS for use in forecast offices. Redistribution of these products in the IDD as replacements for the Gridded GLM products currently being created by Eric Bruning of Texas Tech University will be implemented by the beginning of June.
We have also obtained access to Himiwari imagery and Level 2 products from Amazon AWS S3. We are asking the User Committee to weigh in on the importance/need of adding some of these products to the IDD. One thing that must be kept in mind is the volume of Himiwari data is large, so the ability of end user sites to handle real-time feeds of the full set of data is in question.
The tuned cavity filter that was installed on the UCAR NOAAPort dish in the front of FL-2 resulted in a great reduction of ingest errors that were being caused by Terrestrial Interference (TI) being caused by 5G phone service. After seeing how good ingest could be after the installation of a 5G filter, we lobbied the sites that are running NOAAPort ingest installations to have filters installed on their dishes. This lobbying effort was only partially successful as some sites are waiting to do their own filter installation until the NOAAPort broadcast is moved from Galaxy 28 to a satellite that is further west. Exactly when this transition will occur is not known.
We are trying to keep abreast of a possible expansion of the NOAAPort SBN that would, if implemented, increase available bandwidth twofold. As one might imagine, progress on this and other fronts has been slowed by reorganization of priorities during the COVID-19 epidemic.
As noted earlier, both the NIMAGE and UNIWISC datastreams were revamped to include GOES-East/West imagery and products, and we will add more products if asked to do so by the governing committees. The FNEXRAD datastream was enhance by the addition of MRMS products we receive in an LDM feed from NOAA/NCEP, and very recently, the N0Q U.S. national radar composite was replaced by a composite of the so-called “super res” N0B product that was, along with several others, added to NOAAPort by the NWS.
The volume of data available in the NIMAGE, UNIWISC, and FNEXRAD datastreams can be seen in:
http://rtstats.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/iddstats_vol_nc?NIMAGE+oliver.unidata.ucar.edu
http://rtstats.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/iddstats_vol_nc?UNIWISC+oliver.unidata.ucar.edu
http://rtstats.unidata.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/rtstats/iddstats_vol_nc?FNEXRAD+oliver.unidata.ucar.edu
Texas Tech University (Eric Bruning) has been creating value-added Level 2 products created from Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) images as a precursor for similar products potentially being added to NOAAPort. We have been distributing these Level 2 products in the NIMAGE IDD datastream. Creation of these GLM Level 2 products is scheduled stop when the Unidata equipment grant that funded the effort expires in June. As mentioned above, these GLM products will be replaced by others that are being created by tiles that are being generated in AWS by NOAA.
We welcome contributions of additional value-added Level 2 satellite products community members.
Continue working with SSEC on their fanout approach that insulates GRB ingestion from expected (e.g., NCAR twice per year power downs; twice per year solar interference periods; etc.) and unexpected (e.g., TI caused) service interruptions
We still intend to establish a test bed for the creation of Level 2 (L2) products from GOES-16/17 imagery, model output and observational data.
The objective would be to provide the capability of running user site submitted algorithms to create L2 products and make them available for testing for a short period of time via the IDD, the TDS, McIDAS ADDE and AWIPS EDEX. This initiative has been slowed by the inability by most staff to work on-site.
We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:
Prepared May, 2022