A sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) and Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed snapshots of thunderstorms over parts of the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea off the northern coast of Alaska on 12 July 2021. The coldest convective cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were in the -30 to -40ºC range. Unusual aspects of these thunderstorms included their high latitude location over ice-covered waters — as far north as 75ºN latitude — and the large amount of cloud-to-surface lightning strikes that they produced.

There were 6 lightning strikes in Alaska today, and 159 over the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea. #akwx @AlaskaWx pic.twitter.com/PL8i17gR3Z

— Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) July 13, 2021

Update on thunderstorms rumbling across across the Chukchi & Beaufort Seas on July 12. All this is occurring over high concentration sea ice as unstable air from Siberia is pushed eastward by a deep storm center farther north. #akwx #Arctic #lightning @Climatologist49 pic.twitter.com/8Ef78IOJRF

— Rick Thoman (@AlaskaWx) July 13, 2021

These thunderstorms were not surface-based — instead, they were forced by an approaching cold front (surface analyses) which helped to release elevated instability within the 500-300 hPa layer (below).

Rawinsonde data from Utqiagvik (PABR) were not available (due to ongoing equipment malfunction at that site) — but a NUCAPS profile near the southernmost cluster of convection around 15 UTC (below) showed the layer of instability aloft.

View only this post Read Less

The use of routine multispectral geostationary satellite imagery over the United States has increased the routine use of Red/Green/Blue composite imagery to describe and evaluate surface and atmospheric conditions. This blog post will detail how to create new (or old) RGB composites using two UW-Madison/CIMSS/SSEC-developed tools: The Satellite Information and Familiarization Tool (SIFT; Journal article link) and Geo2Grid (Previous blog posts showing Geo2Grid examples are here). The scene to be highlighted is shown above in the GOES-16 Cirrus Band; it was chosen because of the interesting parallel bands in the Cirrus, features that can identify regions of turbulence. A larger-scale view of the data (created using CSPP Geosphere) is here (for the 1.37 µm Cirrus band) or here (for True Color).

SIFT has a very useful (and easy!) RGB generator.  For this case involving cirrus, I decided to create an RGB using the Split Window Difference (10.3 µm – 12.3 µm, Band 13 – Band 15) (shown here) that has been used to identify cirrus for quite a while (link to journal article), the cirrus band 4, and also the Snow/Ice channel Band 5 (1.61 µm).  After downloading SIFT and importing the data (and creating the split window difference field — here’s a blog post that describes how to do that), a SIFT user can create an RGB and tinker with the bounds.  Changing the bounds and the gamma causes a simultaneous change in the RGB in the SIFT display window, so it’s not difficult to iterate to a satisfactory solution.  As shown below, the RGB created has the Split Window Difference as the red component, with values from 0 (no red) to 12.0 (saturated red) and a Gamma value of 2;  the cirrus channel (C04) is the green component with values from 0.27 (no green) to 0 (saturated green) and a Gamma value of 2;  the snow/ice channel (C05) is the blue component with values from 0.0 (no blue) to 0.40 (saturated blue) and a Gamma value of 1.

The RGB created in SIFT using these values is shown below.  Maybe using maximum green — a color one’s eyes are usually particularly adept at viewing — for no signal in the cirrus channel was not the best choice.  But there is nice contrast between the background and the thin cirrus, and an obvious difference between the parallel lines of cirrus in the middle of the image and other clouds, such as the cirrus at the western edge of the image!

---

How do you create something similar using Geo2Grid?  Step 1, of course, is always to download and install the software package.  To see what products can be created with geo2grid, enter this command:  ./geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff --list-products -f /path/to/the/directory/holding/GOESR/Radiance/Files/*syyyydddhhmm*.nc .  Let’s assume all 16 channels from ABI are available.  Important caveat: Geo2Grid will only work on one data time at a time, so specify your year/julian day/hour/minute with sufficient stringency.

RGB product definitions are found in yaml files within the Geo2Grid directory. Ones for abi in particular are found in $GEO2GRID_HOME/etc/satpy/composites/abi.yaml in which file you would enter something what is shown below for a product called ‘cirrustest’;  note that it has three channels:  the first is a difference between C13 and C15 (that is, the Split Window Difference);  the second is C04 (cirrus channel) and the third is C05 (snow/ice channel). This is the same as in the SIFT definitions.

Within $GEO2GRID_HOME/etc/satpy/enhancements/abi.yaml there is a further definition of this RGB.  The crude stretch defines the bounds of the RGB:  Red includes values from 0 – 12;  Green from 27 — that is, a reflectance of 0.27, or 27% — to 0 (note that it is inverted);  Blue from 0 to 40.  In addition, Gamma values are specified:  0.5, 0.5 and 1.

Two important things to note:  Gamma in SIFT follows National Weather Service and JMA conventions.  Gamma in Geo2Grid follows EUMETSAT conventions. Thus, one is the reciprocal of the other.  Also, note the _abi suffix in the abi.yaml file name in enhancements, i.e., cirrustest_abi, to specify the satellite.

After making these changes to the two abi.yaml files, and rerunning this command:  ./geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff --list-products -f /path/to/the/directory/holding/GOESR/Radiance/Files/*syyyydddhhmm*.nc, you should see a new possibility: cirrustest (or whatever you have named your new RGB). Then you run Geo2Grid commands to create the cirrustest RGB (with the -p cirrustest flag.  The commands below sequentially create the grid for the analysis, create the tiff file, georeference it with coastlines (none, in this case over the Gulf) and latitude/longitude lines, and annotate it.

../p2g_grid_helper.sh CIRRUSRGBtest -88.3 26.6 500 -500 960 720 > $GEO2GRID_HOME/CIRRUSRGBtest.conf
#
../geo2grid.sh -r abi_l1b -w geotiff -p cirrustest C04 -g CIRRUSRGBtest --grid-configs $GEO2GRID_HOME/CIRRUSRGBtest.conf --method nearest -f /arcdata/goes_restricted/grb/goes16/2021/2021_07_08_189/abi/L1b/RadC/*s20211891411*.nc
../add_coastlines.sh --add-borders --borders-outline='blue' --borders-resolution=f --add-grid --grid-text-size 20 --grid-d 5.0 5.0 --grid-D 5.0 5.0 GOES-16_ABI_RadC_cirrustest_20210708_1411??_CIRRUSRGBtest.tif
convert GOES-16_ABI_RadC_cirrustest_20210708_1411??_CIRRUSRGBtest.png -gravity Southwest -fill yellow -pointsize 14 -annotate +8+24 "1411 UTC 8 July 2021 Cirrus RGB" GOES-16_ABI_RadC_cirrustest_20210708_1411_CIRRUSRGBtest_annot_2.png

The final image from Geo2Grid is shown below. Its geographic coverage is slightly different than in SIFT, above, but the two RGBs have similar looks.

View only this post Read Less

Late in the day on 06 July 2021, Tropical Storm Elsa regained hurricane intensity as of 0000 UTC, just off the west coast of Florida. 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (above) showed the tropical cyclone during the 1500 UTC to 0000 UTC time period. In the morning, cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -80ºC or colder were seen (violet pixels), but during most of the day they were in the -70 to -79ºC range. While Elsa had been moving over water with Sea Surface Temperature values around 28ºC, the Ocean Heat Content of those waters was relatively low.

For a few hours the low-level circulation of Elsa remained exposed from its deep convection to the northeast — and GOES-16 Visible images with an overlay of deep-layer shear at 1800 UTC, from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site (below), showed that this was due to westerly shear values around 25-30 knots over the area.

The center of Elsa moved just to the east of Buoy 42023 — a plot of wind speed/gust and pressure is shown below.

A DMSP-15 Microwave (85 GHz) Microwave image at 2155 UTC (below) indicated that Elsa had nearly completed the formation  of a closed eyewall at that time.

GOES-16 Infrared  / Water Vapor Difference images (below) revealed pockets of stronger overshooting tops near the center of deep convection during the hours leading up to Elsa reaching hurricane intensity.

===== 07 July Update =====

After once again weakening to Tropical Storm intensity at 0600 UTC, Elsa eventually made landfall along the coast of Florida around 1500 UTC on 07 July, as seen in 1-minute GOES-16 Visible and Infrared images (above) — inland impacts included an EF0 tornado, wind gusts to 71 mph and rainfall exceeding 11 inches (NWS Public Information Statements).

At 1223 UTC, a DMSP-17 SSMIS Microwave image (below) indicated that a closed eyewall was not present with Elsa at that time.

View only this post Read Less

AOML (The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory) maintains a Direct Broadcast antenna site that holds satellite imagery (created using CSPP — the Community Satellite Processing Package) created when a tropical system — such as Elsa — is within the download footprint of the AOML antenna.  This imagery — particularly in the microwave — is useful to describe the system’s structure. The Day Night Band image above, from Suomi NPP at 0636 UTC, shows a non-symmetric storm with the bulk of clouds to the east and south of the surface center (at that time near 23.9 N, 82.3 W, i.e., in the Florida Straits to the south of Dry Tortuga).  Rainfall, as diagnosed using MIRS algorithms and microwave ATMS (Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder) data from NPP, below, shows the asymmetry of the storm as well:  almost all the diagnosed rain is east of the center. (It’s helpful that both infrared imagers and microwave sounders are on the same satellite!)

The GCOM-W1 (supported by JAXA) satellite also scanned Elsa shortly before 0700 UTC on 6 July.  Microwave observations at ~36 GHz, below, and at 89 GHz, farther below, can help to characterize the structure of the storm. Indeed, observations at/around 85-89 GHz are used in the MIMIC TC product as described here.

In addition to the AOML site, the CIMSS Direct Broadcast site contains Polar Orbiting imagery in near-real time. The afternoon 88.2 GHz image from (NOAA-20) ATMS is shown below.  Cold cloud tops associated with strong scattering by ice of the 88.2 GHz signal are apparent.

---

There are a multitude of polar orbiters such that observations show up in clusters of time.  However, for a better time animation, it’s still best to rely on GOES-16!  The animation below, from CSPP Geosphere, shows a sheared storm south and west of Ft Myers FL.  Indeed, an 1800 UTC 6 July 2021 shear analysis from the CIMSS Tropical website (here, from this site), shows westerly shear of 25-30 knots.

GOES-16 True-Color imagery, 6 July 2021 from 1730 to 1920 UTC (Click to animate)

For the latest information on Elsa, consult the webpages of the National Hurricane Center, or the SSEC/CIMSS Tropical Weather Page.

View only this post Read Less