Himawari-8 - GeoCat 1.0.3 Australian Domain Level 2 v1.0

This dataset contains derived satellite observations of cloud properties over the Australian region at hourly temporal resolution and 2 km spatial resolution. The Himawari-8 CSPPGeo Geocat collection Level-2 (L2) grid is on 2 km of horizontal resolution that includes Australia and the Maritime Continent. The L2 product include full output variables from CSPP-Geo Geocat and Advance Himawari Imagery on Himawari-8, 25, and 41 variables, respectively, with hourly temporal resolution for Austral summer months (Nov-March) from 01 November 2015 to 31 March 2020. This dataset is produced using the Geostationary Cloud Algorithm Testbed (Geocat) together with pre-processed ancillary data. The tool used to apply Geocat is described here: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/csppgeo/geocat.htmlhttp://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/csppgeo/geocat.html .
The input data are Himawari-8 AHI retrievals v1.3, freely available from the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Meteorological Satellite Centre of JMA: https://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/en/himawari89/space_segment/sample_hisd.html
Ancillary data come from

OISST Huang, B., C. Liu, V. Banzon, E. Freeman, G. Graham, W. Hankins, T. Smith, and H.-M. Zhang, 2020: Improvements of the Daily Optimum Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) - Version 2.1, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0177.1
GFS Global Forecast System (GFS) [0.5 Deg.] Landing Page 
NOAA daily 4km snow and Ice Cover 
HDF file containing merged NISE and IMS files on a daily gridded product.
NISE - Brodzik, M. J. and J. S. Stewart. 2016. Near-Real-Time SSM/I-SSMIS EASE-Grid Daily Global Ice Concentration and Snow Extent, Version 5. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado, USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/3KB2JPLFPK3R. [2020-10-01].
IMS - U.S. National Ice Center. 2008, updated daily. IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis at 1 km, 4 km, and 24 km Resolutions, Version 1. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado, USA. NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.7265/N52R3PMC. [2020-10-01].

L2 product includes the following variables:

Cloud albedo
Cloud Optical Depth 
Cloud Phase
Cloud Type
Low Cloud and Fog
Cloud Particle Size Distribution 
Cloud Top Height
Cloud Top Pressure
Cloud Top Temperature
Cloud Liquid Water Path 
Cloud Ice Water Path 
Clear Sky Masks

These variables are derived using the following algorithms:

ACHA - ABI Cloud Height Algorithm

DCOMP - Daytime Cloud Optical and Microphysical Properties

NCOMP - Nighttime Cloud Optical and Microphysical Properties

This dataset is a product of the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) Extreme Rainfall research project

NB Some images were not available for processing at the time of the dataset release, we listed all the missing timesteps in the file L2_file_gaps_20210225.txt
More images might become available and then new lists will be created accordingly with the timestamp indicating when the files where added.
We ask users to specify the date they access the datasets when they cite them as indicated in the citation field.