GOES Satellite Imagery for GIS

The IEM receives a "real-time" feed of GOES East and West satellite imagery in GINI format. We process this into GIS-ready RASTERs for download and web services. This page details this dataset.

AWIPS native projections


current imagery folder

Reprojected into EPSG:4326 "lat/long"


current imagery folder

Ready for Google-Maps


Tile Map Service
OpenLayers Example

Changes

  • 24 November 2014: The Infrared Imagery is now color enhanced by default. The previous default grayscale was not very useful. You can find a color ramp here.

IEM GOES Ingest Status

BirdLatest ImageryJSON Metadata
East GOES13 2017-01-19T13:15:18Z IR - VIS - WV
West GOES15 2017-01-19T13:15:17Z IR - VIS - WV

The GOES (Geostationary Satellite) provide the commonly seen views of clouds from space. The IEM receives a near real-time feed of this data in GINI format and processes it into geo-referenced PNG raster files. A directory of these files can be found here, but the native grid projections may be difficult for you to use. The IEM projects this data onto a simple lat/long grid (EPSG:4326) and you can find those files here. Besides the raw files, the IEM also provides OGC web-services of this imagery.

AWIPS Projection Data

The raw GINI data files are provided on predefined grids used by the National Weather Service AWIPS system. Here is an attempt to cross reference these grid numbers into Proj4 strings.

AWIPS Grid Proj4 String ESRI Projection files
208 proj=merc lat_ts=20 x_0=0 y_0=0 a=6371200.0 b=6371200.0
211 proj=lcc lat_0=25 lat_1=25 lat_2=25 lon_0=-95 a=6371200.0 b=6371200.0 awips211.aux.xml awips211.prj

These AWIPS projection imagery files can be found here. You will find three files for each image: the raw PNG imagery, the world file, and a JSON formatted metadata file.

OGC Web Map Service

Conus GOES visible imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/conus_vis.cgi?

Conus GOES infrared imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/conus_ir.cgi?

Conus GOES water vapor imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/conus_wv.cgi?


GOES East infrared imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/east_ir.cgi?

GOES West infrared imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/west_ir.cgi?

GOES West Alaska infrared imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/alaska_ir.cgi?

GOES West Hawaii infrared imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/hawaii_ir.cgi?


GOES East visible imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/east_vis.cgi?

GOES West visible imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/west_vis.cgi?

GOES West Alaska visible imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/alaska_vis.cgi?

GOES West Hawaii visible imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/hawaii_vis.cgi?


GOES East water vapor imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/east_wv.cgi?

GOES West water vapor imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/west_wv.cgi?

GOES West Alaska water vapor imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/alaska_wv.cgi?

GOES West Hawaii water vapor imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/wms/goes/hawaii_wv.cgi?

Note: To get the WMS capabilities, you need to add
VER=1.1.1&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
to the URIs above. Your WMS application may require it.

Archive

Since 20 Dec 2005, the IEM has archived 4km composites of East/West imagery.

Since 8 March 2009, water vapor channel was added to the archive as well.

Since 21 June 2011, the IEM started archiving GOES East and West vis,ir, and water vapor imagery in PNG format on the AWIPS 211 projection.

Since 14 March 2012, the IEM started archiving all of the GINI processed imagery.

22 March 2012, removed the confusing filenames of including the GOES satellite identifier in the filename. This causes problems when the satellites change from east to west.

Today's archive of imagery
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/archive/data/2017/01/19/GIS/sat/
The URL pattern contains the year, month, and day. The datafiles have timestamps in UTC.

Online Applications

  • The RADAR & NWS Warnings app provides a neat web mapping interface combining radar and satellite data along with NWS warning products.