Procedure 1. NUCAPS Soundings & 850 MB Theat-E, GOES-16 Vis (0.64um)
Forecasters need some context for the NUCAPS soundings, so you will see in this procedure and all of the rest (with the exception of one) the inclusion of some form of GOES-16 ABI imagery with the NUCAPS sounding locations. It's important to know why "holes" appear in the gridded data or why soundings are coded as yellow or red. The presence of clouds helps to provide the necessary context here. This procedure includes a simple visible image (0.64 um), but we also included 850 mb theta-e. Theta-e can include valuable information about the location of frontal boundaries, and can indicate locations for locally higher instability in some pre-convective environments.
Procedure 2. NUCAPS 850-500 MB Lapse Rate, GOES-16 0.64um and 10.3um
Here, we include NUCAPS soundings along with gridded NUCAPS 850-500 MB Lapse Rate data. We also include the GOES-16 visible (0.64 um) and the 10.3 um IR "sandwich" product. The lapse rates seemed appropriate to include with the sandwich product since the inclusion of the IR can also relate something about cooling cloud tops in areas of strong elevated instability or steep lapse rates.
Procedure 3. NUCAPS Soundings & 850-500 MB Lapse Rates, GOES-16 Vis (0.64um), and MRMS Refl at -10C
Here, is the same as the last, except...we leave out the IR imagery and include MRMS reflectivity at -10C. Why -10C? Well, it's the beginning of the mixed phase region, potentially useful for lightning production, showing signs of early convection. The -10C layer also usually falls somewhere within the 850-500 MB layer. Ok, closer to 500 mb probably...but well...we had to choose something.
Procedure 4. NUCAPS Soundings & 400-200 MB RH, GOES-16 Vis (0.64um) and 6.2 um Water Vapor
In this procedure, we include the gridded NUCAPS 400-200 MB RH, along with visible and imagery from the upper-level water vapor band (6.2 um). We chose 400-200 MB RH since this vertical region corresponds generally well with the weighting function for the 6.2 um band. We include the visible channel again (although it is layered under the WV channel) for sounding context.
Procedure 5. NUCAPS Soundings & 850-300 MB RH, GOES-16 Vis (0.64um) and 7.3 um Water Vapor
For this procedure, we employed the same reasoning as above, including the 850-300 MB RH since the weighting function for 7.3 um is rather wide, encompassing this vertical region. It could probably be argued that this should be narrowed a bit, but AWIPS only allows for specific vertical pressure layers. This seemed the most appropriate at the time.
Procedure 6. NUCAPS Modified Soundings & 850-500 MB Lapse Rates, GOES-16 Vis (0.64um)
This procedure contains the modified NUCAPS soundings along with visible imagery and 850-500 MB lapse rates. We includes these lapse rates since these layers generally offer good retrievals for NUCAPS, and not boundary layer, which is modified in these soundings anyway. Also, forecasters have suggested it may be good to have other data which would help to identify soundings that are in areas of potentially greater instability.
Procedure 7. 4Panel - 850-500 & 700-500 MB Lapse Rates, NUCAPS/HRRR/GFS20/NAM40
Here, we offer a simple comparison of NUCAPS gridded data with some numerical model data. In this case, the HRRR, NAM, and GFS. Of course, there are certainly other comparisons possible, but we wanted to keep it simple at first. However, please feel free to offer other suggestions!
As promised, here are some sample snapshots of the procedures...
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| Procedure 1. |
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| Procedure 2. |
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| Procedure 3. |
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| Procedure 4. |
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| Procedure 5. |
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| Procedure 6. |
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| Procedure 7. |
-Kris and Nadia
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