Taking a look at the highlighted areas, the top image is from GOES-E showing CI values of 92% in an area that developed into decent convective towers. The bottom image is from GOES-W with the same area showing CI values of 46%. Why such a difference?
jca
The differences between GOES-East and -West are caused by the different training databases used at UAHuntsville for these two satellites. In the east, convective storms typically have warmed/more moist cloud bases and certainly more moisture to work with. In the west, convective storms are of high base and the precipitation development process can begin above the freezing level. Hence, there will be differences across the terminator (in the overlap region) where the equation for -West provides one answer and that for -East provides another. Over mountainous regions, the GOES-West methodology is a better one to use.
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