The GOES Microburst Windspeed Potential Index

A suite of products has been developed and evaluated to assess hazards presented by convective downbursts to aircraft in flight derived from the current generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) (11-12). The existing suite of GOES microburst products employs the GOES sounder to calculate risk based on conceptual models of favorable environmental profiles for convective downburst generation. A GOES sounder-derived wet microburst severity index (WMSI) product to assess the potential magnitude of convective downbursts, incorporating convective available potential energy (CAPE) as well as the vertical theta-e difference (TeD) between the surface and mid-troposphere has been developed and implemented. Intended to supplement the use of the GOES WMSI product over the United States Great Plains region, a GOES Hybrid Microburst Index (HMI) product has also evolved. The HMI product infers the presence of a convective boundary layer by incorporating the sub-cloud temperature lapse rate as well as the dew point depression difference between the typical level of a convective cloud base and the sub-cloud layer. It is proposed to merge the WMSI and HMI into a Microburst Windspeed Potential Index (MWPI) algorithm for implementation in the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI).