Assessment of a GOES microburst product for two early cold season convective storms

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) imager channel 3 - 4 brightness temperature difference (BTD) product for two early cold season severe convective storm events that occurred over the Mid-Atlantic region on 17 November and 1 December 2010. Both of these events involved squall lines that produced strong downbursts as they tracked over the Tidal Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay regions. It has been found recently that the BTD between GOES infrared channel 3 (water vapor) and channel 4 (thermal infrared) can highlight regions where severe outflow wind generation (i.e. downbursts, microbursts) is likely due to the channeling of dry mid-tropospheric air into the precipitation core of a deep, moist convective storm. These two cases demonstrate effective operational use of this image product for cold-season convective storm events.