This website works best with a newer web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Microsoft Edge. Internet Explorer is not supported by this website.

CIMSS Satellite Blog

MENU

Using geo2grid to create animations

By Scott Lindstrom •

GOES-16 Airmass RGB, 1400 UTC on 2 June 2020 to 1640 UTC on 3 June 2020

Severe weather occurred over the upper Midwest on 2 June 2020, and a derecho occurred over the mid-Atlantic States on 3 June 2020. These two events were linked, and the animation above shows the system moving and redeveloping from Minnesota on 2 June 202 eastward to Pennsylvania on 3 June 2020. How was this animation created?

geo2grid is a software packaged developed at CIMSS. It is designed to produce high-quality full-resolution imagery from archived (or real-time) GOES-16/GOES-17 Level-1b imagery. This blog post (a follow-up to this one) will outline how to use the software package to create imagery.  Note that geo2grid runs on CentOS6-compatible Linux.  There is no Windows version.  Here are the steps used to create the imagery above.

    1. geo2grid software can be downloaded as a g-zipped tarball from this link. (You may need to register — for free! — before downloading). Version 1.0.1 was released in March of 2020. You can also download documentation (always a good idea) as a pdf file from the download site, or you can access it online.  Once you have unzipped and untarred the software package, you’re ready to begin.  Your unix system must know where the software package sits, and that’s through this command: EXPORT GEO2GRID_HOME=/path/to/Geo2GridSoftwareLocation/
    2. Of course, you will also need data.  For Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) data, geo2grid expects Radiance fields.  These can be accessed via NOAA CLASS, or via “The Cloud”, or from a GRB Receiving antenna.  (some data sources are listed here)  NOAA CLASS ABI L1b Radiances data (ordered under “GOES-R Series ABI Products (GRABIPRD) (partially restricted L1b and L2+ Data Products) ”  )  will have a file format that looks something like this:  OR_ABI-L1b-RadF-M6C08_G16_s20201542340169_e20201542349477_c20201542349544.nc ; that particular file listed is Full Disk (the ‘F’ in ‘RadF’) when GOES-16 was in Mode 6 (M6) scanning, and it contains Band 8 (C08);  the start time is Year 2020, Day 154 (June 2 2020) at 23:40:16.
    3. As noted in this blog post, you can specify which fraction of the domain to display. geo2grid also has a mapping routine if you want to define your own domain (i.e., not a satellite projection, or a subset of that satellite projection), and documentation is under ‘Utility Scripts’ at the geo2grid documentation site.  To define a domain near the Great Lakes, for example, I used this command:   $GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/p2g_grid_helper.sh PADERECHO -83.0 45.0 2000 -2000 1500 800 > $GEO2GRID_HOME/PADERECHO.conf ;  the shell scripts takes a grid name (PADERECHO in this case), a center longitude/latitude (83.0 degrees West, 45.0 Degrees North), x- and y- grid-spacing in meters (2 km for this case), and the number of points in the x- and y- directions.  These mapping instructions are placed in a configuration file;  cat $GEO2GRID_HOME/PADERECHO.conf will show this line in the file:  PADERECHO, proj4, +proj=lcc +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +lat_0=45.00000 +lat_1=45.00000 +lon_0=-83.00000 +units=m +no_defs, 1500, 800, 2000.00000, -2000.00000, -104.24668deg, 50.40805deg .  It might take some trial and error using geo2grid to find the map domain that suits you best, but it is a simple matter to iterate to a solution.
    4. Next, run geo2grid.   The command I invoked (with small changes for each time) is here:  $GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff -p airmass -g PADERECHO --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/PADERECHO.conf --method nearest --cache-dir=$GEO2GRID_HOME/datacache/ -f /data-hdd/PADerecho/Day154/14/*1450*.nc   There are several flags included in this call, and they are explained in the documentation, but also here.
      • -r:  What kind of data are being read?  In this case, level-1b data from ABI
      • -w:  Output format (geotiff).  That is the only option for imagery
      • -p:  What imagery should be created?  In this case, airmass RGB.  To find out what can be computed given the data present, user the –list-products flag.  For the data I have downloaded, this returned C08, C10, C12, C13, C15, airmass:  I had downloaded to the specified directory the components necessary to compute the airmass RGB (plus band 15).  If you wanted to create imagery for all these channels in addition to the airmass RGB, -p airmass C08 C10 C12 C13 C15 would work.  (Note:  C15 is not actually needed in the computation of the airmass RGB).
      • -g:  to what grid should these data be interpolated?  The answer: the PADERECHO grid that is defined and specifed where –grid-configs points to:  $GEO2GRID_HOME/PADERECHO.conf;
      • –method:  what interpolation method should be used?  For this case, nearest neighbor is specified.
      • –cache-dir:  This is used to speed processing.  If you have multiple files being interpolated to the same grid, it speeds things to save the interpolation methods/points.  You have to specify the directory where this file will sit.
      • -f:  Where do the Radiance files sit?  In this example I have placed different times in separate directories.  I haven’t yet figured out how to use Geo2Grid that points to a directory where multiple times sit.
    5. geo2grid includes scripts (“add_coastlines.sh“;  for full documentation, see the ‘Utility Scripts’ section in the geo2grid documentation)  that will add maps to the imagery.  $GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/add_coastlines.sh --add-coastlines --coastlines-resolution=h --coastlines-level=4 GOES-16_ABI_RadF_airmass_20200602_152017_PADERECHO.tif  This command invoked only a few of the mapping additions, as described below.  For a full list, refer to the documentation.
      1. –add-coastlines ;  as you might expect this flag adds coastlines.  In the animation above, you’ll see that the coastlines include lakes.  You can also add borders, grids (lat/lon lines) and other features.
      2. –coastline-resolution=h ; I have asked for high resolution.
      3. –coastlines-level=4 ; This is the default level of detail in the lines.
      4. The .tif is the geotiff created from Geo2Grid.  When add_coastlines.sh is finished, the filename GOES-16_ABI_RadF_airmass_20200602_152017_PADERECHO.png is created.
    6. geo2grid does not annotate imagery.  I use ImageMagick for that.  (something like this:  convert GOES-16_ABI_RadF_airmass_20200603_163017_PADERECHO.png -gravity Northeast -fill white -pointsize 32 -annotate +8+40 "3 June 2020 1630 UTC" GOES-16_ABI_RadF_airmass_20200603_163017_PADERECHOannotate.png )

A challenge in scripting geo2grid is that the start time of the files is not constant.  For example, on 2 June, the 15:20 image starts at 15:20:17.1 (as shown above, the file name includes 152017) ; the 17:20 image starts at 17:20:16.9 and the created filenames include 172016.

The completed animation is shown above.

Categories: GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Training