An overview of the enhanced cloud and water vapour products from EUMETSAT new generation imagers

Loredana Spezzi; Alessio Bozzo; John Jackson; Hans Joachim Lutz; Andre Belo do Couto; Phillip Watts; Thomas August; Bertrand Fougnie; Bojan Bojkov

doi:10.1117/12.2679703

19 October 2023 An overview of the enhanced cloud and water vapour products from EUMETSAT new generation imagers

Loredana Spezzi, Alessio Bozzo, John Jackson, Hans Joachim Lutz, Andre Belo do Couto, Phillip Watts, Thomas August, Bertrand Fougnie, Bojan Bojkov

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12730, Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XXVIII; 1273002 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2679703
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2023, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

The EUMETSAT Central Facility retrieves and disseminates several near-real time geophysical products from both geostationary and polar VIS/IR imagers. The primary scope of these missions is to serve Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), nowcasting and climate monitoring. In this contribution, we focus on the cloud and Water Vapor (WV) imaging products from the new generation EUMETSAT imagers i.e., the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) on board of Meteosat Third Generation (MTG-I, launched in Dec 2022) and METimage on board EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS-SG, expected 2024+). These instruments provide unprecedented spatial resolution (down to 500 m at Nadir), temporal sampling (ten minutes for the geostationary FCI), and wider spectral range (approximately 0.4 μm to 13 μm) including WV (approximately 0.9 μm, 1.38 μm, approximately 6.7 μm, approximately 7.3 μm), O₂ A-band (0.762 μm), and CO₂ (approximately 13.3 μm) absorption channels. We present the retrieval and validation approach chosen for these products and the challenges presented by the near-real time operational processing. We explore, in particular, the expected improvements based on the enhanced instrument’s capabilities (i.e., more accurate cloud detection, layering, altitude and spatial inhomogeneity), while maintaining continuity with the legacy products from their predecessor satellites. In particular, the new approximately 0.9μm channel allows improved daytime estimates of WV amount near the surface. We show preliminary cloud and WV products retrieved from early FCI measurements, including their validation strategy against independent cloud observations from the ground-based ACTRIS network and humidly measurements from IGRA radiosondes.

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(2023) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Citation Download Citation

Loredana Spezzi, Alessio Bozzo, John Jackson, Hans Joachim Lutz, Andre Belo do Couto, Phillip Watts, Thomas August, Bertrand Fougnie, and Bojan Bojkov "An overview of the enhanced cloud and water vapour products from EUMETSAT new generation imagers", Proc. SPIE 12730, Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XXVIII, 1273002 (19 October 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2679703

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