GOES-16 DMW Display

NWS forecasters have commented on the present display of the Derived Motion Winds (DMW's) in AWIPS-II. They do not like the display, and would prefer it be made similar to the current GOES-13/15 operational satellite-derived winds.

To start, we review the display of the operational GOES-13/15 satellite-derived winds below. Displayed are all of the winds by pressure level. One can load winds by pressure level, and wind barbs and labels are color coded by pressure level. When sampling the winds in the AWIPS-II display, the output includes: time, wind derived from IR or VIS, temperature at pressure level of wind, pressure level of wind, wind direction and wind speed. Forecasters think this display is great. They like the color coding by height, and they like all of the output that is shown when a wind is sampled. An improvement would be to get more specific about the channel from which the wind was derived (WV, IRW, SWIR, VIS). Ideally, this is what the display would look like for GOES-16 DMW's in AWIPS-II. Unfortunately, it is not...

... Below is a display of of the GOES-16 DMW's in AWIPS. Similar to what we did for the GOES-13 winds above, we loaded all of the GOES-16 winds by pressure level. Instead of by height, the winds are color coded by speed for each level. For each level, winds are grouped into a >=50 kts bin, <50 kts bin, <30 kts bin (3 bins for each level). This creates a lot of separate products to be listed. Instead, all winds for a pressure level should be loaded together in one label. When sampling the wind data, the only output is time, direction, and speed. No indication of wind level, temperature, or channel from which the wind was derived from, is given. Forecasters do not like this display, and find it makes the winds less usable. Forecasters would much prefer a display like that from the GOES-13/15 satellite-derived winds, shown above.

- Bill Line, NWS