NWCSAF GEO v2016 : new products, changes and improvements

Abstract

The objective of the Nowcasting Satellite Application Facility (NWC SAF) is the generation of satellite derived products for their direct application to Nowcasting for targeted users. To achieve this goal, the NWC SAF team develops, maintains and distributes software packages that allows the users to generate, at their premises and for the user defined area, satellite derived products with a direct application to Nowcasting. The NWC SAF distributes two different software packages for GEO and LEO satellites. Current operational software package for GEO satellites is MSG v2013, distributed in 2013 and applicable to MSG data. Products generated with MSG v2013 include Cloud Products (Cloud Mask, Cloud Top Temperature and Height, Cloud Type, Cloud phase), Precipitation Products (Probability of Precipitation and Convective Rainfall Rate and Probability of Precipitation and Convective Rainfall Rate from Cloud Microphysics), High Resolution Winds (HRW), Water content and Instability Indices, Automatic Satellite Image Interpretation and detection and tracking of Rapidly Developing Convective Cells. A new software package, GEO v2016, has been distributed in November 2016. Main changes and improvements of GEO v2016 respect to previous operational SW package MSG v2013 are highlighted in this paper.