Using optical flow temporal interpolation of satellite imagery to assist multi-sensor global cloud product composites

Large domain cloud-product composites, important for climate research and operations in civil and military aviation, maritime, and renewable energy management, require the synthesis of products retrieved from different satellites scanning at different times around the globe.  Common cloud-product composites simply use a pixel within the nearest scan time (with similar sensor zenith angles) to select as the valid cloud state for any given image.  Such an assumption leaves clouds out of valid time position, especially when large temporal differences exist between the composite valid time and imagery scan time over fast-moving clouds (i.e. cirrus).  Within this manuscript, we introduce a method for accounting for cloud motions between different scanned imagers before composite synthesis, which we term as “Temporal Correction.”  The method uses an advanced dense (every image pixel) optical flow retrieval technique coupled with a simple, occlusion reasoning warping method..., , # Using optical flow temporal interpolation of satellite imagery to assist multi-sensor global cloud product composites

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp80](10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp80)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data provided here includes imagery and cloud-products derived from the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), the Meteosat-10 Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI), and the SNPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) ascending orbits, which our algorithm tracks and corrects for motions to composite all on to one seamless grid.

### Files and variables

#### File: OCTANE_Temporal_Correction_Data_Files.tar.gz

**Description:** A tarball containing all necessary imagery for GOES ABI to Meteosat SEVIRI and SNPP VIIRS comparisons. In the ABI_TO_SEVIRI directory, there are directories for the ABI (File Count: 2; imagery netcdfs), ABI_ScanLineTime (File Count: 1; netcdf with the scan time of each pixel for ABI), CTH_ABI (File Count: 2;...,