Great Lakes Surface Temperatures in GOES-16 Level 2 Products
GOES-16 Level 2 Sea Surface Temperature product with Default Enhancement, re-scaled enhancement, and re-scaled enhancement with GOES-16 ABI 0.64 µm visible imagery, 1502 UTC on 19 March 2018 (Click to enlarge)
One of the Level-2 products in AWIPS is Sea-Surface Temperature. This is created hourly on the Full Disk scale, and is shown above. The image above toggles between the default enhancement (from -5º to 40º Celsius) to one that is more appropriate for mid-March (-5º to 30º Celsius), and then with the ABI Band 2 (0.64 µm) Visible Image. This allow change allows for features in the Gulf of Mexico to become more obvious. (Note: The default Sea-Surface Temperature enhancement in AWIPS will change in the future; the maximum value will be 35º C, not 40º).
Sea-Surface temperatures over the Great Lakes, under clear skies, are not displayed. Sea-Surface temperatures are currently computed only over the oceans — not over large lakes.
GOES-16 Land Surface Temperature, computed hourly in the CONUS domain, does include Great Lakes water temperatures; it is shown below (Here is it in a toggle with different ABI Channels). The default temperature scale for Land Surface Temperature is -10º to 110º (Fahrenheit), which is different than the default for Sea-Surface Temperatures. The cold mid-March temperatures (low to mid-30s, generally, with a few sub-30s showing over ice) of the Great Lakes stand out plainly. Regions of ice do persist over the Great Lakes, as is apparent in this toggle between ABI’s Visible (Band 2, 0.64 µm), Snow/Ice Near-Infrared (Band 5, 1.61 µm) and Cirrus Near-Infrared (Band 4, 1.37 µm) Imagery at 1502 UTC. Lake ice remains over eastern Lake Erie, eastern and northern Lake Superior, and north of Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron.
GOES-16 Land Surface Temperature (including SSTs where skies are clear over the Great Lakes), 1502 UTC on 19 March 2018 (Click to enlarge)
(Note: Plans exist to include large lake surface temperatures in the computation of Sea-Surface temperature at some point in the future.)