High Resolution Winds

High Resolution Winds (HRW)

Operationally produced by NWC SAF.

Application:

The main purpose of NWC SAF/HRW is to provide detailed observations of horizontal wind data, with global coverage at regular interval times. These observations can be very important for weather analysis and forecast tasks, especially over oceans and remote areas, in which other sources of wind data are scarce.

HRW can be generated for every new satellite image, considering tracers defined in infrared/water vapour images (during daytime and nighttime) and in visible images (during daytime).

Advantages:

✓ Useful for watch and warning of dangerous wind situations.

✓ Monitoring of the general atmospheric flow, small scale circulation or wind singularities.

✓ Monitoring of the wind convergence/divergence (related to the development/dissolution of meteorological systems).

✓ Can also be assimilated as wind data in Numerical Weather Prediction Models, or other Analysis and Forecast applications.

Limitations:

X The variability with time of the amount of AMVs and Trajectories, through which there can be areas with no HRW data. This is related to the presence and evolution with time of cloudiness/moisture features.

Accessibility and Dissemination:

    1. Local installation: Product is accessible after registration (signed contract) at NWCSAF and installation of NWCSAF GEO v2018 in the local environment. It can be run every 15 minutes or with the different settings every 5 minutes RSS. Output format is NetCdf.
    2. Images for the last 24h, updated every 15 minutes at NWCSAF web site: http://www.nwcsaf.org/hrw

Additional Information:

Web site
Training Module
Practical info and documentation

Overview modified after NWC SAF Practical Guide by V. Nietosvaara, EUMETSAT, 2018.

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