NOAA GMGSI: Global Hourly Satellite Mosaic with 8 km Resolution

NOAA/NESDIS composites hourly global imagery from multiple geostationary satellites, including GOES-East, GOES-West, Meteosat-10, Meteosat-9, and Himawari-9. The mosaic provides visible, shortwave infrared, longwave infrared, and water vapor imagery with an approximate 8 km horizontal resolution. It is updated every hour.

Use Cases

• Monitor global cloud cover and storm systems based on visible and infrared imagery.
• Analyze land and sea surface temperature patterns based on longwave infrared data.
• Track atmospheric water vapor content for weather forecasting based on water vapor imagery.
• Detect fog and nighttime cloud cover based on shortwave infrared data.

Strengths

• Provides near-global coverage by compositing data from five major geostationary satellites.
• Updated hourly, offering high temporal resolution for tracking dynamic phenomena.
• Includes four distinct spectral bands (VIS, SIR, LIR, WV) for multi-faceted analysis.
• Has a consistent approximate 8 km horizontal resolution across the composite.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NOAA/NESDIS, in collaboration with EUMETSAT and JMA.

Collection Method

Composited from data from several geostationary satellites orbiting the globe.

Time Range

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Freshness

Updated every hour.

Geography

Near-global coverage, from the eastern Atlantic Ocean to the central Pacific Ocean, Europe, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Asia-Oceania region.