Creating and Plotting gridded GLM data with CSPPGeo software

By Scott Lindstrom • 13 November 2023

CIMSS provides (free of charge) CSPPGeo software that can create (and plot) gridded GLM data from GLM Level 2 LCFA files. The data from those files can then be plotted by geo2grid on top of ABI data to give an idea of how much lightning is occurring each minute. On 6 November, severe hail was reported over lower Michigan as documented in this blog post. What did the gridded GLM fields look like on that day?

To discern this, visible imagery fields at 1436 and 1441 UTC on 6 November (near the times when severe hail was being reported) were first created using geo2grid over a specific domain, using the commands below (the results are shown above). The first command shown just below (p2g_grid_helper.sh) creates a 960×720 grid (‘GRR’) centered at 43.0^oN, 86.0^oW, with 500-m resolution in the E-W and N-S direction, and redirects the created grid parameters to the file ‘GRR2.yaml’. Then geo2grid is invoked to extract C02 (GOES-16 Band 2, visible imagery centered at 0.64 µm) on that grid at 1436 and 1441 UTC on 6 November 2023 (Day 310).

$GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/p2g_grid_helper.sh GRR -86.0 43.0 500.0 -500.0 960 720 > $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml

$GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff -p C02 -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_G16ABIdata/L1b/RadC/*M6C02*s20233101436*

$GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff -p C02 -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_G16ABIdata/L1b/RadC/*M6C02*s20233101441*

The commands above create two files: GOES-16_ABI_RadC_C02_20231106_143617_GRR.tif and GOES-16_ABI_RadC_C02_20231106_144117_GRR.tif.

Next, CSPPGeo software gridded GLM software is used to create minute-by-minute files of Gridded GLM, in this case from 1431 to 1440 UTC on 6 November 2023 (Day 310). These data will be overlain on the 14346 and 1441 UTC visible images created above.

sh ./cspp-geo-gglm.sh /path_to_G16GLMdata/glm/L2/LCFA/OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_s20233101431*.nc
sh ./cspp-geo-gglm.sh /path_to_G16GLMdata/glm/L2/LCFA/OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_s20233101432*.nc
sh ./cspp-geo-gglm.sh /path_to_G16GLMdata/glm/L2/LCFA/OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_s20233101433*.nc
....
sh ./cspp-geo-gglm.sh /path_to_G16GLMdata/glm/L2/LCFA/OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_s20233101440*.nc

Then, geo2grid was used to create GLM imagery (in this case Total Optical Energy fields) at the 10 times. Recall that the --list-products-all flag can be added to the geo2grid call to see which products can be produced given the input netCDF fields.

./geo2grid.sh -r glm_l2 -w geotiff -p total_energy -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_griddedGLMFields/CG_GLM-L2-GLMF-M3_G16_s20233101431000*.nc

./geo2grid.sh -r glm_l2 -w geotiff -p total_energy -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_griddedGLMFields/CG_GLM-L2-GLMF-M3_G16_s20233101432000*.nc

./geo2grid.sh -r glm_l2 -w geotiff -p total_energy -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_griddedGLMFields/CG_GLM-L2-GLMF-M3_G16_s20233101433000*.nc

....

./geo2grid.sh -r glm_l2 -w geotiff -p total_energy -g GRR --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/GRR2.yaml -f /path_to_griddedGLMFields/CG_GLM-L2-GLMF-M3_G16_s20233101440000*.nc

At this point, we have tif files that have the C02 (Band 2) fields, and tif fields that have Total Optical Energy fields at 1-minute intervals. Next, we color-enhance the total optical energy fields using geo2grid’s add_colormap.sh, and then add maps to both the Band 2 images and the Total Optical Energy fields, resulting in png files that have state and lake borders added. Those commands are shown below.

$GEO2GRID_HOME/bin/add_colormap.sh ../../enhancements/glm_energy_colortable.txt *GOES16*energy*.tif

./add_coastlines.sh --add-coastlines --coastlines-resolution f --add-borders --borders-resolution f GOES*16*flash*.tif

./add_coastlines.sh --add-coastlines --coastlines-resolution f --add-borders --borders-resolution f GOES*16*C02*.tif

All that remains is to annotate the Band 2 imagery, and overlay the Total Optical Energy (TOE) fields on top. This is done (not shown) using ImageMagick commands. The two Band 2 images are shown above, and the same two fields with 5 TOE fields overlain on each are shown below.

Categories: GLM, GOES-16, Software, Training