DYCOMS-II Satellite:  GOES-10 NRL Day/Night Low Cloud Imagery (JPG)


1.0  General Information


The GOES-10 NRL Day/Night Low Cloud Imagery (JPG) is one of 
several satellite products collected as part of the Dynamics and
Chemistry of Marine Stratocumulus Phase II:  Entrainment Studies
(DYCOMS-II) project field catalog operated by the University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Joint Office for Science 
Support (UCAR/JOSS; http://www.joss.ucar.edu/dycoms/catalog/).
This product is the visible channel during daylight hours (1400
to 0200 UTC) and a bispectral combination of infrared channels at
night (0400 to 1200 UTC).  The products cover the period from 
1 - 31 July 2001 and cover the DYCOMS-II region (27-37 N and 
115-127 W).  The products are typically available every 15 
minutes.  The products were acquired from the Naval Research 
Laboratory (http://kauai.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/lowcloud.cgi).
All images are in jpg format.


2.0  Data Contact


Jeff Hawkins (hawkins@nrlmry.navy.mil)
Tom Lee (lee@nrlmry.navy.mil)


3.0  Product Information


This product allows users to view low clouds twenty-four hours a
day. It uses visible images during the day and a bispectral
combination of infrared channels at night. Low clouds appear as 
white against a darker background both during the day at night. 

At night the bispectral images show high clouds as black. During
the daytime high clouds are white. Thus, while low clouds are
always white, high clouds change from white (day) to black (night). 

This product is made possible using the channels from the GOES
multispectral imager. The product is especially designed to view
stratus and fog. It is much less effective over cumulus clouds.


4.0  Quality Control Procedures


UCAR/JOSS conducted no quality checks on these data.


5.0  File Naming Convention


The file names are structured as follows:

goes-10.yyyymmddhhmm.daynight_lowcloud.tod.jpg

Where goes-10 is the satellite used
      yyyy is the four digit year
      mm is the two digit month
      dd is the two digit day
      hh is the hour (UTC)
      mm is the minute
      daynight_lowcloud is the name of the product
      tod is the time of day and is one of three things:
          day for daylight (i.e. visible) images (1400-0200 UTC)
          night for night (i.e. bispectral IR) images 
               (0400-1200 UTC)
          term for images which contain the terminator (0230-0330 
               and 1230-1330 UTC)


6.0  References


None