Himawari-8 Atmospheric Motion Vectors - Operational Generation and Assimilation

In October 2014 the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) launched the new generation geostationary satellite Himawari-8. This satellite provides ten minute imagery in sixteen wavebands over the Asian and Australasian region. The imagery has been navigated, calibrated and subsequently used in the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) to generate Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) over the full earth disk viewed from the satellite every ten minutes. Each vector has been error characterised and assigned an expected error. In preparation for the operational assimilation of the ten minute data, these high temporal and spatial resolution data were used with the BoM operational database to provide forecasts from the next generation operational forecast model ACCESS APS2 using 4D Var. Results from these tests indicate these locally generated Himawari-8 ten minute AMVs are of high density and quality and have the potential to improve numerical weather prediction (NWP) model initialisation and forecasts. The forecasts undertaken include cases associated with extreme weather. The results also provided the appropriate times, data selection and application methods for the effective use of these high temporal resolution data. As a result of these studies these wind data were approved for inclusion in the BoMs operational database and are used in operational forecasting.