GEOCAT Level 2 Software for Himawari-8 and Himawari-9

GEOCAT is an algorithm testbed that was used by many of the GOES-R science teams to develop product algorithms. Originally created by NOAA scientist Mike Pavolonis in collaboration with software developers at CIMSS, GEOCAT supports processing data from the Himwarai AHI instrument.

The CSPP Geo GEOCAT package supports processing data from the AHI instrument on the Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 satellites. The software is capable of processing AHI data in both the HimawariCast (HRIT) and HimawariCloud (HSD) data formats. Output will be written to NetCDF-4 files.

List of Products:

  • Clear Sky Masks
  • Cloud and Moisture Imagery
  • Cloud Optical Depth (day/night)
  • Cloud Particle Size Distribution (day/night)
  • Cloud Phase
  • Cloud Type
  • Cloud Top Height
  • Cloud Top Pressure
  • Cloud Top Temperature
  • Cloud Liquid Water Path (day/night)
  • Cloud Ice Water Path (day/night)
  • Low Cloud and Fog

The recommended hardware configuration to run GEOCAT on AHI data in the full-resolution HSD format is a rack-mounted system with the specifications shown below.

Note that the computational cost of routine quicklook image generation is not accounted for in this hardware recommendation.

Minimum system requirements to process AHI data in HSD format:

  • Intel Xeon E5 v2 “Ivy Bridge” or better, 20-core, 2.8GHz CPU with 64-bit instruction support,
  • 192 GB RAM
  • CentOS 7 64-bit Linux (or other compatible 64-bit Linux distribution),
  • 14 TB disk space (does not include long-term storage)

Current Release: CSPP Geo GEOCAT Version 1.1 Beta 1