GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager color product development

The current Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series was inaugurated in 1994 with the launch of GOES-8 and will continue with two more satellites (GOES-O and -P) after the most recent GOES-13 launched in 2006. The next-generation GOES (beginning with GOES-R) will be launched in the 2015 time frame. This new series of satellites will include improved spatial, temporal, spectral, and radiometric resolution. The last two characteristics are manifest by an increased number of spectral bands and increased precision for measurements from those bands. To take advantage of the lead time needed to design, build, and test this new and complex satellite system, work is going into developing image products to be implemented as soon as GOES-R becomes operational. Preparations for GOES-R image products for applications to various weather events, especially meso-scale events, are well underway. The approach used for these "risk reduction" activities is to apply data from existing operational and experimental satellites (both polar orbiting and geostationary) to create image products that will emulate those to be available from GOES-R as closely as possible. Those image products can either be new products or improvements leveraged on existing operational products. In this article, the new GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager is briefly reviewed, and the evolutionary development of two qualitative products-one for the detection of fog and stratus, and the other for blowing dust-is presented. Emphasis is on the evolutionary development of these mesoscale products and possible quantitative discrimination among the various image features that are seen.