Enhanced IR Helpful in Spotting Precipitation Areas: One Case Study

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kercher, Barry L.
• Corporate Authors:
  United States. National Weather Service. Eastern Region
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service) ; ER (Eastern Region)
• Description:
  Operational use of satellite infrared (IR) measurements in relating precipitation to cloud-top radiation had been limited in the past because of the procedure used in transmitting the IR data to Weather Service Forecast Offices. In the past, the IR information was transmitted in the form of a photograph in which progressively lighter gray shades represented progressively colder radiation. For clouds, this means that progressively higher (colder) tops were shown by progressively lighter shades of gray. The difficulty with this procedure is that the photo receiver is not able to reproduce all 256 gray shades (each representing a specific temperature range) transmitted, and even if it could, the human eye has its limitations in recognizing the variations in gray shades. This resulted in loss of important cloud-top details.
• Keywords:
  Artificial Satellites In Meteorological Optics Clouds Infrared Albedo Measurement Precipitation Forecasting Infrared Albedo Precipitation Forecasting
• Series:
  Eastern Region technical attachment (National Weather Service (U.S.))   76-7B
• Format:
  pdf
• Document Type:
  Technical Attachment
• Place as Subject:
  East (U.S.)
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC0 Public Domain
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0ceb9170370020580251425ecd4f7425405d5167318e21530373c166c3faf2a397b1e3e2ba18ae65bbedf14ac48d4a6f02e1b4ad4a2e0a9c1692a0a4ccecd35e
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/70677/noaa_70677_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.97 MB ]