EFP daily map discussion

Today's EFP map discussion included some very interesting interactions regarding GOES-R. Bruce Entwistle from the Aviation Weather Center who was participating in the EFP's aviation forecast group brought up their afternoon forecast on a loop of visible satellite imagery with cloud-top cooling rates overlaid during the briefing. He described how the cloud-top cooling rates helped focus them on area of interest for deepening convection and helped them nudge their forecast outlook lines slightly. He said that he was seeing rates exceeding 22 K/15-min at some times. He noted that for this sort of application where they are expected to issue their forecasts hours in advance, the cloud-top cooling and convective initiation products may not be as useful, but regional forecast facilities that are required to issue more short term forecasts may find this invaluable.

Louie Grasso brought up a separate discussion regarding the fire activity up north of Montreal, Canada. He talked to the participants about how the 3.9 micron channel was able to detect fire hotpots and showed a very good example of that in real-time over Canada. He mentioned how since GOES-R will have higher spectral resolution, we will be better able to determine the intensity and distribution of the fires. He pointed out that the smoke plumes associated with these fires were hard to distinguish from the clouds around them, and may even become hard to see at all when the sun angle is high since they can be very thin. He told the participants that when GOES-R is available, additional visible and near-IR channels will be able to distinguish different cloud and aerosol types through techniques such as RGB composites. He also pointed out to the participants that the 3.9 micron channel was composed of a reflected and emitted component and showed them an example of a MCS during day and night hours, which showed the cloud tops "cooling" substantially during the switch from night to day. Since the reflected solar component of the 3.9 micron channel is very sensistive to ice particles, the cloud seem's "cooler" when the sun is up. The participants seemed very interested in this and seemed to capture their interest into the wide variety of uses of satellite data outside of visible and IR images alone.