CIMSS GOES Derived
Product Image of Total Precipitable Water CIMSS GOES Derived
Product Image of Total Precipitable Water
This image is an example of one of the derived products that can be generated from the GOES-8 imager or sounder data. The product displayed is the total atmospheric precipitable water vapor value derived from the imager data. For a higher resolution image, click once on the image icon, or click once here. (Precipitable water is the amount of liquid water (in millimeters) if all the atmospheric water vapor in the column was condensed.) The value is color-coded with browns being the driest and reds being the most moist. Clouds are represented as a gray color (see the color bar at the bottom of the image). A time sequence of the images is the best way to monitor drying and moistening trends.
The images are displayed at a reduced resolution. The full resolution is approximately 4km at the sub-satellite point, but we have sampled to reduce this by about a factor of 2.
The images are calculated using radiance measurements from the longwave split window (imager channels 4 and 5) and the water vapor channel (imager channel 3). Products from the sounder can use the additional spectral channels on that instrument.
Other derived products that can be generated are the surface skin temperature and an atmospheric instability parameter, the lifted index. These will be produced and distributed operationally by the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services. Data to create the imagery is available hourly with the sounder and every fifteen minutes with the imager.
The algorithm for Derived Product Imagery was developed by the NESDIS System Design and Applications Branch at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies and implemented in the McIDAS environment at the Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin.
