The LBA-Ecology CD-07 team collected and processed GOES-8 imager data over the LBA region to characterize the incoming radiation and precipitation rates at regional scales. This data set contains surface down-welling solar radiation, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and infrared radiation, as well as precipitation rates at 8x8-km and half-hourly resolutions. The data cover the time periods: 01Mar99-30Apr99 and 01Sep99-31Oct99. The data missing from the temporal series was filled using interpolation to create a continuous sequence of data for carbon modeling studies.
Files are available in compressed binary format.
Cite this data set as follows:
Gu J. J., E. A. Smith, and H. J. Cooper. 2006. LBA-ECO CD-07 GOES-8 L3 Gridded Surface Radiation and Rain Rate for Amazonia: 1999. Data set. Available on-line [http://www.daac.ornl.gov] from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A. doi:10.3334/ORNLDAAC/831.
The LBA Data and Publication Policy [ http://daac.ornl.gov/LBA/lba_data_policy.html ] is in effect for a period of five (5) years from the date of archiving and should be followed by data users who have obtained LBA data sets from the ORNL DAAC. Users who download LBA data in the five years after data have been archived must contact the investigators who collected the data, per provisions 6 and 7 in the Policy.
This data set was archived in May of 2006. Users who download the data between May 2006 and April 2011 must comply with the LBA Data and Publication Policy.
Data users should use the Investigator contact information in this document to communicate with the data provider. Alternatively, the LBA Web Site [ http://lba.inpa.gov.br/lba/ ] in Brazil will have current contact information.
Data users should use the Data Set Citation and other applicable references provided in this document to acknowledge use of the data.
Project: LBA (Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon)
LBA Science Component: Carbon Dynamics
Team ID: CD-07 (Smith / Cooper / Dias)
The investigators were Cooper, Harry J.; Smith, Eric A.; Dias, Pedro Leite da Silva; Grose, Andrew M.E.; Gu, Jiujing and Norman, John M. .
You may contact Gu, Jiujing (jgu@met.fsu.edu) for additional information.
LBA Data Set Inventory ID: CD07_GOES_L3_Gridded_SRB
Surface radiation fluxes and rainfall are the two foremost cloud modulated variables that affect land surface processes. High space/time specification of these fields are required to adequately represent the complex coupling of energy, water, and carbon budget processes that ultimately determine the variations in carbon sequestration and release within a forest ecosystem. A high resolution gridded data set of various surface down-welling radiation parameters and precipitation rates covering a large portion of the LBA-Ecology study area has been produced for the wet and dry seasons of 1999. The data set, retrieved from GOES-8 imager data, has 8km/half-hourly resolution.
Additional information is available in the companion document [ http://daac.ornl.gov/daacdata/lba/carbon_dynamics/CD07_GOES_L3_Gridded_SRB/comp/CD07_L3_Gridded_SRB-2_readme.pdf ].
Thirty-minute averages of surface radiation and precipitation parameters have been interpolated onto equal area grid at 8-km resolution. The parameters include:
- Down-welling solar radiation at surface
- Down-welling photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) at surface
- Down-welling Infrared radiation at surface
- Precipitation rate at surface
Each file contains data for one day. The naming convention for the tar files is as follows:
The first two digits of each tar file name 99 is the year of the data.
The last three digits of the name is the day of the year.
After untarring each file, you should see 48 compressed binary files, such as A990600000.sat.gz.
The 99 and 060 are again the year and the day of the year.
The next 2 digits is the hour, followed with a 2-digit minute. The time is in UTC.
Each of these compressed binary files are of size 477 x 295 (477 Columns/Samples and 295 Rows/Lines) with four bands. Each of these bands is in Floating point (Real) format. The first 4 bytes of the data contains the number of bytes in the record. Same information is stored at the end of the record.
These files have been created on SGI. If these files are read on Non-SGI machines, it might be necessary to swap the bytes, depending upon the machine/Operating system used.
Site boundaries: (All latitude and longitude given in degrees and fractions)
| Site (Region) | Westernmost Longitude | Easternmost Longitude | Northernmost Latitude | Southernmost Latitude | Geodetic Datum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Para Western (Santarem) - Altamira (Para Western (Santarem)) | -75 | -40 | 5 | -15 |
Please Note: The spatial Coverage above is an approximate extent of the study area. For the exact spatial coverage refer the 477x295_latlon.bin file. The first data value is for Coordinate ( -15.801867 S and -75.173599 W )
Time period:
The GOES mission is to provide the nearly continuous, repetitive observations that are needed to predict, detect, and track severe weather. GOES spacecraft are equipped to observe and measure cloud cover, surface conditions, snow and ice cover, surface temperatures, and the vertical distributions of atmospheric temperature and humidity. They are also instrumented to measure solar X-rays and other radiation, collect and relay environmental data from platforms, and broadcast instrument data and environmental information products to ground stations. The GOES system includes the satellite (with the GOES instrumentation and direct downlink data transmission capability); the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) facility at Wallops Island, VA; and the ground systems at NESDIS.
Quality Assessment
Data Validation by Source
The retrieved radiation and precipitation were validated using data collected at EUSTACH and TRMM-LBA sites near Rondonia and Belem. See Gu et al.(2002) for details.
Confidence Level/Accuracy Judgment
In comparison to the in situ measurements collected at the EUSTACH sites during the wet and dry season 1999 on the half-hourly and 8-km scales, the bias errors for solar, PAR and infrared radiation are less than 4, 6, and 3% respectively of the mean values. Precision is on the order of 20, 20, and 5%. The bias of rain rate is on the order of 25%. (see Gu et al. 2002 for details)
The data were acquired using the FSU Direct Readout Ground System located in Tallahassee, FL, starting on 01-Mar1998 and continuing through 28-Feb-2001. The GOES-8 satellite orbits Earth in a geostationary orbit at an altitude of 36,000 km. The surface radiation budget (SRB) and precipitation data were created from raw GOES-8 imager data.
Equipment
GOES-8, launched on April 13 of 1994, is the first of NOAA's next generation of geostationary satellites. It is stationed at 36,000 km above the equator at 75W longitude. The new series of GOES introduces improved capabilities to observe weather-related phenomena.
Sensor/Instrument Description
The GOES-8 imager is an imaging radiometer designed to sense radiant and solar reflected energy from sampled areas of the earth. It has a five-band multi-spectral capability with high space/time resolution and 10-bit precision. The five spectral bands are (1) 0.52-0.72 um (visible), (2) 3.78-4.03 um (shortwave infrared window), (3) 6.47-7.02 um (upper-level water vapor), (4) 10.2-11.2 um, and (5) 11.5-12.5 um (thermal infrared windows). The special resolutions of the imager data are 1, 4, 8, 4, and 4 km, respectively. The Imager consists of electronics, power supply, and sensor modules. The sensor module containing the telescope, scan assembly, and detectors is mounted on a base plate external to the spacecraft, together with the shields and louvers for thermal control. The electronics module provides redundant circuitry and performs command, control, and signal processing functions; it also serves as a structure for mounting and interconnecting the electronic boards for proper heat dissipation. The power supply module contains the converters, fuses, and power control for interfacing with the spacecraft electrical power subsystem. The electronics and power supply modules are mounted on the spacecraft internal equipment panel.
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Imager Instrument Characteristics Spectral Bands (micrometers)
VIS IR2 IR3 IR4 IR5
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Wavelength (micrometers) 0.55 3.80 6.50 10.20 11.50
to to to to to
0.75 4.00 7.00 11.20 12.50
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Clouds X X X X X
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Water Vapor X X X
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Surface Temp 0 X 0
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Winds X X X
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Albedo & IR Flux X 0 X 0
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Fires & Smoke X X 0 0
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X: Primary Spectral Channel
0: Secondary (supplementary) Spectral Channel
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Field of View Defining Element Detector
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Optical Field of View: Square
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5-channel Imaging: Simultaneously
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Scan Capability: Full Earth/Sector/Area
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Channel/Detector Instantaneous Field of View (IFOV)
Visible/Silicon 1 km
Short-wave/InSb 4 km
Moisture/HgCdTe 8 km
Long-wave 1/HgCdTe 4 km
Long-wave 2/HgCdTe 4 km
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Radiometric Calibration: Space and 290 Kelvin IR internal blackbody
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Signal Quantizing (NEâ€delta’T) 10 bits all channels
S/N Minimum 3X better than specifications
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Frequency of Calibration Space 2.2 sec for full disk;
9.2 or 36.6 sec for sector/area
Infrared 30 minutes typical
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System Absolute Accuracy IR channel less than 0.1 K
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Transmit Frequency 1676.00 MHz
Collection Environment
The data were acquired using the FSU Direct Readout Ground System located in Tallahassee, FL, starting on 01-Mar-1998 and continuing through 28-Feb-2001. The GOES-8 satellite orbits Earth in a geostationary orbit at an altitude of 36,000 km.
Source/Platform
GOES-8
Source/Platform Mission Objectives
The mission of the GOES satellite series is to provide the nearly continuous observations that are needed to predict, detect, and track severe weather. GOES spacecraft are equipped to observe and measure cloud cover, surface conditions, snow and ice cover, surface temperatures, and the vertical distributions of atmospheric temperature and humidity. They are also instrumented to measure solar X-rays and other energetics, collect and relay environmental data from platforms, and broadcast instrument data and environmental information products to ground stations. For LBA, GOES-8 imagery, along with the other remotely sensed images, was collected in order to provide spatially extensive information over the primary study areas at varying spatial scales. The primary objective for compiling GOES-8 images was to collect visible, IR, and water-vapor channel data covering the LBA region at a sufficiently high temporal frequency for subsequent use in analyzing weather events and deriving temporal surface radiation parameters and patterns.
This data is available through the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) or the EOS Data Gateway.
E-mail: uso@daac.ornl.gov
Telephone: +1 (865) 241-3952
FAX: +1 (865) 574-4665
References Platform/Sensor/Instrument/Data Processing Documentation
Menzel, W. P., and J. F. W. Purdom. 1994. Introducing GOES-I: The first of a new generation of geostationary operational environmental satellite. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 75, 757-781.
Kelly, K. A. 1989. GOES I-M image navigation and registration and user Earth location. GOES I-M Operational Satellite Conf., Arlington, VA, US. Department of Commerce, NOAA, 154-167.
Rossow, W. B., C. L. Brest, and M. Roiter. 1996. International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) New Radiance Calibrations. WMO/TD-No. 736. World Meteorological Organization.
Rossow, W. B., C. L. Brest, and M. D. Roiter. 1995. International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP): Update of radiance calibration report. Technical Document, World Climate Research Programme (ICSU and WMO), Geneva, Switzerland, 76 pp.
Weinreb, M., M. Jamieson, N. Fulton, Y. Chen, J.X. Johnson, C. Smith, J. Bremer, and J. Baucom. 1997. Operational Calibration of the Imagers and Sounders on the GOES-8 and -9 Satellites. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS 44.
Journal Articles and Study Reports
Gu, J., and E. A. Smith. 1997. High-resolution estimates of total solar and PAR surface fluxes over large-scale BOREAS study area from GOES measurements. Journal of Geophysical Research 102(D24):29,685-29,705.
Gu, J., E. A. Smith, G. Hodges, and H. J. Cooper. 1997. Retrieval of Daytime Surface Net Longwave Flux over BOREAS from GOES Estimates of Surface Solar Flux and Surface Temperature. Submitted to Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing.
Gu, J., E. A. Smith, H. J. Cooper, A. Grose, G. Liu, J. D. Merritt, M. J. Waterloo, A. C. Araujo, A. D. Nobre, A. O. Manzi, J. Marengo, P. J. Oliveira, C. Randow, J. Norman, and P. S. Dias. 2002. Modeling carbon sequestration over the large-scale Amazon basin, aided by satellite observations. Part I: Wet- and dry-season surface radiation budget flux and precipitation variability based on GOES retrievals. Journal of Applied Meteorology 43(6): 870-886.
Related Publications
Gu, J. J., E. A. Smith, H. J. Cooper, A. Grose, G. S. Liu, J. D. Merritt, M. J. Waterloo, A. C. de Araujo, A. D. Nobre, A. O. Manzi, J. Marengo, P. J. de Oliveira, C. von Randow, J. Norman, and P. S. Dias. Modeling carbon sequestration over the large-scale Amazon basin, aided by satellite observations. Part I: Wet- and dry-season surface radiation budget flux and precipitation variability based on GOES retrievals.
Grose, A. M. E., et al. 2002. Possibilities and limitations for quantitative precipitation forecasts using nowcasting methods with infrared geosynchronous satellite imagery. Journal of Applied Meteorology 41(7): 763-785
Smith, E. A., et al. 2002. Intercomparison of microwave radiative transfer models for precipitating clouds. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 40(3): 541-549.
Gu, J. J., E. A. Smith, and J. D. Merritt. 1999. Testing energy balance closure with GOES-retrieved net radiation and in situ measured eddy correlation fluxes in BOREAS. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 104(D22): 27881-27893.