Investigating the Usefulness of GOES-16 Imagery for
Decision Making with Sea Breeze Convection in the Southeastern United States
(62)
Cynthia Elsenheimer, NOAA/NWS
Forecast Office Jacksonville, FL, Jacksonville,
FL
Peter Wolf, NOAA/NWS
Forecast Office Jacksonville, FL
Chad Gravelle, NOAA/NWS
Operations Proving Ground
Abstract:
The latest applied
meteorological research using high-resolution datasets for the convective
warning process, such as the applicability of using Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellite (GOES)-16 imagery, is almost entirely focused on severe
convection. Identifiable features in GOES imagery such as lower tropospheric
boundaries, orphan anvils, inflow feeder clouds, rapid cloud-top cooling,
overshooting tops, and above anvil cirrus plumes can signal National Weather
Service (NWS) warning forecasters to the development and evolution of severe
convection. While weakly-forced sea breeze or lake breeze convection does not
primarily produce organized severe thunderstorms, a considerable threat to
public safety still exists because commercial and recreational outdoor
activities are commonly impacted by thunderstorms. In addition, short-term
forecasts of the development and evolution of sea breeze convection is
challenging for NWS forecasters because damaging wind gusts commonly occur in
non-severe environments. By integrating GOES-16 imagery into the forecaster
workflow to anticipate areas favorable for convective initiation and the
evolution of strong convection, it is hypothesized that the situational
awareness the forecaster gains can overcome high-impact low-probability events
on a given day. Therefore, using weakly-forced sea breeze convective cases from
the 2017 and 2018 warm seasons, this applied research and presentation has two
primary objectives. First, by observing the four-dimensional structure of the
sea breeze front using the spectral, spatial, and temporal improvements of GOES-16,
demonstrate how the imagery allows forecasters to enhance situational awareness
to anticipate short-term changes in convective development and evolution.
Second, show how the enhanced situational awareness gained by incorporating
GOES-16 imagery into convective decision making can allow for the anticipatory
communication of threats to NWS core partners during sub-severe, but still
significant, thunderstorms.