GOES ABI Manager

A program to manage GOES-ABI (Advanced Baseline Imager) data is complementary to my other satellite software such as GeoSatSignal (for multi-channel sensor combinations and projection remapping) and the MSG Animator (for simple single-channel animations). Currently the program supports GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-18 (GOES-West).

As this is free software, support is via the peer support group, and not directly from me.

Getting the Data

You need to register with EUMETSAT to receive the data over EUMETCast. Use the EO Portal to register.

The data is sent on the second EUMETCast service - HVS-1. Although this is on the same transponder as the Basic Service, it has a higher data rate and may require a larger antenna. I have some notes on transponders here.

Processing the Data - downloading the program

The current version of the GOES ABI Manager is here. It behaves like a simplified subset of my MSG Data Manager.

You need one copy of the program for each of GOES-16 and GOES-18, but both of the executable files can be in the same directory (e.g. D:\Tools\SatSignal\GOES-ABI-Manager\ but they must have different names:

GOES-ABI-Manager.txt
GoesAbiManager-G16.exe
GoesAbiManager-G18.exe
hdf5.dll
hdf5_hl.dll
msvcr120.dll
netcdf.dll
zlib1.dll

Managing the processed data

So you ran out of disk? The GOES ABI Manager program does not automatically delete the older data it produces as some of my other software does. If you run my MSG Data Manager software, that program can delete the .JPG image files produced by the GOES ABI Manager if you set the program to delete older FSD (Foreign Satellite Data) and you have used the standard directory structure (MSG\Images\FSD\yyyy\mm\dd). Set the "FSD Retention" to the number of days of data you want to keep. If you aren't running the MSG Data Manager you could schedule my free TrimTree software to tidy on a regular basis.

Using the data

A recently published paper from Tim J Schmidt describes the use of the 16 spectral band data. Here's the abstract:

The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R series has 16 spectral bands. Two bands are in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, four are in the near-infrared, and ten are in the infrared. The ABI is similar to advanced geostationary imagers on other international satellite missions, such as the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8 and -9. Operational meteorologists can investigate imagery from the ABI to better understand the state and evolution of the atmosphere. Various uses of the ABI spectral bands are described. GOES-R was launched on 19 November 2016 and became GOES-16 upon reaching geostationary orbit. GOES-16 is the first in a series of four spacecraft that will host ABI. GOES-16 became operational on 18 December 2017, in the GOES-East location. The ABI improvement is two orders of magnitude more than the legacy GOES imager due to more spectral bands and finer spatial and temporal resolutions.

See: http://nwafiles.nwas.org/jom/articles/2018/2018-JOM4/2018-JOM4.pdf

Strange image - bits missing?

If you are seeing strange images around 05:00 UTC, like the one below, don't panic! It's around the local midnight time, and the scanner would see a direct view of the sun near the edge of the earth. This could damage the imager (just as your eye's retina or camera sensor could be damaged) so steps are taken to prevent this happening, while preserving as much of the rest of the image as possible.

2018-March-30

2018-April-01

Download & release notes

Please see the file GOES-ABI-Manager.txt in the Zip download.

Current download is V2023.07.19.52, 2,017,738 bytes, MD5 signature: 64C378E3B3CC113119F1CA5496339C4F

V2023.07.19.51 - Skip files greater than 150 MB, possibly sent in error.
V2023.07.20.52 - Don't report unwanted band files as skipped.