ASPB and CIMSS Weekly Report
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ASPB AND CIMSS WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING MARCH 24, 2012

IN THE PRESS:

Short Video on the Evolution of GOES: A short video on the evolution of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) was produced by the NOAA NESDIS Visualization Laboratory (NNVL). Tim Schmit was interviewed as part of the NOAA 'Big Picture' event at annual American Meteorological Society (AMS). The video can be seen at http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail2.php?MediaID=1019&MediaTypeID=3&ResourceID=104501 or several other locations. (T. Schmit, E/RA2, Timothy.J.Schmit@noaa.gov)

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Figure caption: Top of the NOAA Facebook page on 22 March 2012.

ITEMS FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR:

ITEMS FOR THE ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR:

ITEMS FOR THE OFFICE DIRECTOR, STAR:

Support to NWS in Hawaii During GOES-15 Outage: To help mitigate the temporary loss of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-15 imagery during an outage between 21 and 23 March 2012, the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) supplied imagery from four polar-orbiting satellites to the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO) in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Science Operations Officer (SOO) of WFO Honolulu specifically made the request shortly after the outage occurred; imagery was transmitted from CIMSS to the WFO shortly thereafter. With limited in-situ weather observations from the Pacific Ocean, WFO Honolulu relies heavily on satellite imagery for weather forecasting, and the SOO said the additional data from CIMSS was "super helpful". Evidence that supports the value of polar-orbiting imagery as a supplement to GOES imagery is available at http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/10039. The NWS WFO Honolulu homepage, which carried information on the loss GOES-15 imagery, is http://www.prh.noaa.gov/pr/hnl/. (T. Schmit, E/RA2, 608-263-0291, tim.j.schmit@noaa.gov, J. Gerth, CIMSS, 608-263-4942, S. Bachmeier, CIMSS, 608-263-3958)

ITEMS FOR THE DIVISION CHIEF, CoRP:

Participation in 2012 EUMETSAT Organizational Committee Planning Meeting: Wayne Feltz (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, CIMSS) participated in planning the 2012 EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) conference as U.S. representative on 22-23 in Sopot, Poland. The main focus was providing oral and poster presentation guidance for a session titled "Current and Future Satellites, Instruments and their Applications". (W. Feltz, CIMSS, 608-265-6283)

GOES-15 Imager Calibration Issue: An abrupt change at 20:45 UTC on March 12, 2012 was evident in brightness temperatures of band 3 (6.5 micrometers) for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-15 Imager data. The change was first noted by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). This information, along with other time series and comparisons, was shared with GOES engineers and others. An error was traced to a database issue in the Sensor Processing Subsystem (SPS) that generates GVAR. The database was corrected at 20:45 UTC on March 16. (Plus, the calibration was possibly corrected starting at 21:00 UTC on March 14, until before the 00:52 UTC image on March 15.) More information can be found at http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/9995. (S. Lindstrom, CIMSS; M. Gunshor, CIMSS, 608-263-1146; T. Schmit, E/RA2, Timothy.J.Schmit@noaa.gov)

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Figure caption: Comparisons between geolocated GOES-15 and MTSAT Mean Water Vapor Brightness temperatures, for a portion of the image, show good agreement until 2045 UTC on March 12, 2012, when the SPS change that accessed incorrect values in a different database was implemented. Correct database values were used starting again at 2045 UTC on March 16.

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