SSEC Data Center

Overview

The program in this directory takes satellite wind data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center, and converts it into DART format observation sequence files, for use in assimilating with the DART filter program.

Data sources

The Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at University of Wisconsin-Madison has an online data center with both real-time and archival weather satellite data.

The last 2 day’s worth of data is available from ftp://cyclone.ssec.wisc.edu/pub/fnoc.

There is a second satellite wind DART converter in the MADIS Data Ingest System directory which converts wind observations which originate from NESDIS. The data from this converter is processed at the SSEC and the observations will be different from the ones distributed by MADIS.

Programs

Conversion program convert_ssec_satwnd converts the ascii data in the input files into a DART observation sequence file. Go into the work directory and run the quickbuild.sh script to compile the necessary files.
The program reads standard input for the data time range, which types of observations to convert, and then, if quality control information is found in the input file, what type of quality control algorithm to use when deciding whether the observation is of good quality or not. See the references below.

References

  • RF method: Velden, C. S., T. L. Olander, and S. Wanzong, 1998: The impact of multispectral GOES-8 wind information on Atlantic tropical cyclone track forecasts in 1995. Part I: Dataset methodology, description, and case analysis. Mon. Wea. Rev., 126, 1202-1218.

  • QI method: Holmlund, K., 1998: The utilization of statistical properties of satellite-derived atmospheric motion vectors to derive quality indicators. Wea. Forecasting, 13, 1093-1104.

  • Comparison of two methods: Holmlund, K., C.S. Velden, and M. Rohn, 2001: Enhanced Automated Quality Control Applied to High-Density Satellite-Derived Winds. Mon. Wea. Rev., 129, 517-529.