2017 Experiment Complete

The 2017 GOES-R/JPSS Experiment in the HWT is wrapping up today. This has been a great experiment this year with getting to utilize live GOES-16 data in operations here in the testbed. Also we were able to demonstrate GLM lightning data to forecasters for the very first time and have gotten a lot of valuable feedback from forecasters on what they would like to see operationally form the GLM in terms of display capabilities. Feedback from the fourth and final week of the experiment is posted below:

GLM

Get the parallax fixed before fielding

Forecasters will be confused between events, groups, and flashes and what each means and why they are useful

The Stano color curve would be the best default

Being able to monitor trends would be the most useful

A pop up time series like a pop up skew t could be very useful

Training seemed to be pretty good for preparing people

Seeing the spatial extent is a very useful quality of GLM

Another big utility is for monitoring electrification before the other networks can

Don’t see people using it too much if the parallax displacement is still an issue when fielded

NUCAPS

Useful information yesterday out of the gridded products when there was clearing in the area

Obviously most useful for pre-convective environment and getting an early afternoon pass over the area

Overall the experimental product seemed more useful, but there were times that the operational seemed to be a better representation of the environment.

The yellow dots seemed to be somewhat reasonable at times and can have some useful information

As long as people understand how the modifications in the experimental profile are made, they can be extremely useful

Like having both the experimental and the operational soundings to compare the atmospheres

Repeating the latency problem which is the biggest hurdle to operational use

Would be nice to be able to have some automated products produced from NUCAPS profiles

ABI

Understand the RGBs a lot better now than before

Found a couple really useful ones for operations

There were some very useful RGBs for convective applications

RGBs seem to bog systems down in some offices when trying to load

Training should concentrate on best practices and what the colors mean for application

Training needs to be heavily focused on operational benefits

Daytime Cloud Phase RGB seemed to be one that should be introduced first, especially this time of year for convective development

CAPE is still a problem, being consistently too low

Derived Winds should be color coded by pressure level instead of wind speed and steering clear reg, green, yellow type color combinations

ProbSevere

Useful for situational awareness

Good tool for monitoring trends and keeping an eye on storms of interest

ProbTor was useful for seeing storms that were different from any of the other storms

ProbHail was more restrained and seemed to reduce FAR from being too high from relying solely on MESH

Still struggles with wind events and tracking of linear features

-Michael Bowlan

GOES-R Liaison at SPC/HWT