In support of the third Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX-3), imagery from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 8 (GOES-8) was collected and archived. Information about CAMEX-3 is found at the homepage located at http://ghrc.msfc.nasa.gov/camex3.
GOES-8 imagery was collected at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov) throughout the experiment. Images from the satellite were saved as McIdas areas and cropped to show the region of the globe from 60 to 100 degrees West, and 10 to 40 degrees north-- an example is shown. Generally, images are available for all dates between 5 August and 1 October, 1998 at times h+00:15 and h+00:45.
Three channels were archived: channel 1-- visible (0.65 microns), channel 2-- infrared (11 microns) and channel 3-- known as the water vapor channel (6.75 microns). Data is archived in McIdas format. [NOTE: If you do not have McIdas software installed on your machine, reading these data becomes difficult! ] In addition to the McIdas areas are browse images which are saved in .gif format.
Data resolution for visible imagery is 1 km. at nadir, IR is 4 km., and water vapor is 8 km.
Both the McIdas area files and the .gif browse images are similarly named and maintained. In each case, one UTC day worth of data is tarred together yielding a file name which looks like:
cmx3g8_1998.ddd_daily.tar for the McIdas data files, and
cmx3g8B_1998.ddd_daily.tar for the browse image files.
In each of the above examples 'ddd' represents the day of year. Once 'untarred' using the unix command 'tar xvf [filename]' each of these yields the individual data or browse image files. The filename format for these appears as:
cmx3g8_xx_1998.ddd_tttt_mcidas.ara for McIdas area data files, and
cmx3g8B_xx_1998.ddd_tttt.gif for browse image files.
Note that once again 'ddd' means day of year, and as one would surmise, 'tttt' represents the UTC of the image/data. Since there are three channels worth of data available at each image time, 'xx' represents the channel: 'vs' implies visible wavelengths, 'ir' is infrared, and 'wv' is water vapor. Thus, assuming that all images were collected for the given day, you would have 48 images each of infra-red and watervapor, and batween 35 and 40 visible images (no nighttime visible images were archived) per day for both data and browse imagery.
Mentioned previously, data is in McIdas areas. If you have McIdas, you know what you are dealing with. If not, then unless you have custom software which allows you to extract informtion from McIdas areas these data will be of little use to you.
Browse products are helpful in visualization, and because the CAMEX-3 browse imagery are all 'cropped' to the same dimensions with the same corner points, it is a trivial matter to construct .gif movies/animations and the like.
There are no specific technical references for these data, but here are some potentially useful URLs:
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/software/mcidas.html This is the McIDAS home page
http://www.osd.noaa.gov Check here for other satellite data
Data can be ordered and questions addressed at http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/.
To order this data or for further information, please contact: Global Hydrology Resource Center
User Services
320 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville, AL 35805
Phone: 256-961-7932
E-mail: ghrc@eos.nasa.gov
NASA Information Contact: Michael Goodman, Global Hydrology and Climate Center
GHRC Web Curator: GHRC Web Team
Last update: Tuesday, 12-Jun-2007 10:24:35 CDT
If you have trouble viewing or navigating this page, please contact GHRC User Services.
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