Vol. 12 No. 1, May 2021

RA II WIGOS Project Newsletter
DEVELOPING SUPPORT FOR NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL AND
HYDROLOGICAL SERVICES IN SATELLITE DATA, PRODUCTS AND TRAINING

Contents of this issuePage²²²²²²²Marine Weather Broadcast Service by GK2A Satellite
Development of GK2A proxy visible image at night and its application
CMA Observation Quality Management System passed ISO9001 Certification
Himawari RGB Quick Guides
JMA online satellite imagery update
Members of the Coordinating Group
From the Co-editors

Marine Weather Broadcast Serviceby GK2A SatelliteIntroduction
The Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) has started marine weather broadcast
service by GK2A satellite from July 23, 2020,
which provides high-quality digital marine
weather information to ships operating at sea.
The KMA‘s new marine weather broadcast
service is a cutting-edge service that uses GK2A,
Korea’s second geostationary meteorologicalsatellite, to offer high-quality digital marine
meteorological information.
Marine Weather Information
Since 1966 KMA has been providing marine- 1 -134
4
5
66

weather information by radiofax (Weather Fax),
such as significant weather alerts, typhoon track
information and weather charts, that arenecessary to ensure the safety of maritime
activities.
Radiofax broadcast, however, has gradually
become less useful because of the low quality ofprinted fax data, difficulties with providing new
and more information, a limited distance of datatransmission, and low data quality resulted fromradio-frequency interference.
To increase the quality and usability of dataand information, the satellite broadcast service
now offers marine weather information in digitalformat such as video, texts and voice so thatusers can more easily utilize them on theirsmartphones, tablets and screens.

Figure 1 Marine Weather Broadcast Range Comparison (Internet(orange), Radiofax(yellow), andMarine Weather Broadcast Service by GK2A (red))
KMA’s marine weather broadcast service by
GK2A
KMA’s marine weather broadcast service by
GK2A is the world’s only public satellite service
dedicated to providing weather information freeof charge with an aim of ensuring the safety ofships. It transmits marine meteorologicalinformation to ships not only in coastal andoffshore but in high seas where they could havedifficulties maintaining maritime communication
network.
The broadcast service is available for ships
located within a 3,700 km radius of GK2A Full
Disk (East Asia and West Pacific) measurement
domain. And it provides 15 types of 360 products,
including surface analysis and forecast charts,
wave analysis and forecast charts, and satellite
images.
Sea wind and ocean wave forecasts
especially provide forecasts 4 days ahead in East
Asia at 3-hours interval and 12 days ahead overthe globe at 6-hours interval. This will allow ships
operating not only in coastal and offshore waters
but in high seas to use the forecasts for theirsafety and activities.
Through this new service, various domestic
and overseas users are expected to easily
receive and use marine weather information- 2 -provided by KMA. Users can be equipped with adomestically-produced
Small-scale
Data
Utilization Station(SDUS) with more affordable
prices for receiving information. In addition, KMA
plans to provide financial support for users whowant to install the SDUS.
During the past year, KMA has tested theservice cooperating with Korea Coast Guard,
Korea-China Ferry, and Gisang 1 (KMA’s marine
observation ship). It now plans to expand the
supply of SDUS to fishing and leisure ships, aswell as East Asia.
More detailed information:
http://www.kma.go.kr/eng/aboutkma/notice.jsp?
bid=eng_notice&mode=view&num=114(Soyoung LEE, Dong Kee SHIN, KMA)

Geo-KOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) Proxy
Visible Images at Night
GK2A RGB images for weather monitoring
The GK2A has been currently providing more
information with 16 channels. Specially, GK2A
has 4 visible channels (0.47 µm, 0.51 µm, 0.64µm, 0.86 µm), which are very beneficial tomonitor and detect disastrous weatherphenomena such as rapidly developing local
convective cloud, typhoon cloud system, dust,
fire and volcanic ash events. To improve theweather monitoring, a variety of RGB images
such as true color, natural color and day-night
RGB images are used, and the RGB images aregenerated by combining several visible channel
and infrared channel images. Among the RGBimages, the true color RGB (R: 0.64 µm, G: 0.51µm, B: 0.47 µm) and day-night RGB (R: 0.64 µm
at daytime, 3.8 µm at nighttime, G: 10.5 µm, B:12.3 µm) images are only available at daytime.
Development of proxy visible image atnighttime
The GK2A proxy visible data are generated
by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) technique, i.e.
Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks(CGAN). The main characteristics of CGAN is to(a) Original true color RGB image

make model learning by competition of two kindsof objects which can generate accurate results.
As shown in Figure 2, the GK2A AI-basedtrue color RGB image can identify cloud andsurface type in ‘A’ area in nighttime, which wasimpossible with original true color RGB image.
Also AI-based day-night RGB images which
are basically used for weather status analysis byforecasters can identify low-level cloud in ‘B’ areawith distinct red color, while it is difficult withoriginal day-night RGB image which has nonighttime visible data.
KMA started to provide the true color RGB
images and day-night RGB images at nighttime
in public since 24th March, 2021.
(Eun-Ha SOHN, KMA)(b) AI-based true color image- 3 -(c) Original day-night RGB image(d) AI-based day-night RGB image

Figure 2. The GK2A true color RGB images (a, b) and GK2A day-night RGB images (c, d). (b) and (d)represent the AI-based RGB images using proxy nighttime visible data.

CMAObservation
Management System
ISO9001 Certification

Qualitypassedmany
governments
organizations.

andinternational(Xuebao WU, CMA)In December, 2020, meteorological observation
quality management system of China
Meteorological Administration (CMA) passed theoverall certification audit of China Quality
Certificate Centre (CQC), and obtained ISO9001
certificate on December 29，2020.
This system was established on the basis ofGuide to the Implementation of Quality
Management
SystemsforNational
Meteorological and Hydrological Services andOther Relevant Service Providers rolled out byWorld Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The scope of the certification covers 31 provincial(autonomousregions,municipalities)
meteorological departments, and 35 institutions
like National Satellite Meteorological Center(NSMC), CMA Meteorological Observation
Center, and Department of Integrated
Observations.
As a formal member of the International
Certification Network (IQNet), CQC is a thirdparty professional certification body approved by
the Chinese government and recognized by- 4 -Himawari RGB Quick GuidesRGB composite imagery from meteorologicalsatellites is widely used in today’s multi-spectral
imaging era, and is promoted by JMA for various
purposes. In this context, the Agency’s Quick
Guides to satellite products covering RGB
composites
publishedby
satellite
operators/trainers
such
as
EUMeTrain/EUMETSAT and NOAA/NASA
facilitate access to essential information forregular forecasters and other users of satellite
data and imagery. The JMA Japanese-language
versions of RGB Quick Guides released on 29th
September 2020 are generally well received, andare provided online along with the Englishlanguage versions. The guides were alsotranslated into Russian for a training event
conducted jointly by Roshydromet, RSHU (theRussian State Hydrometeorological University)and EUMETSAT. The content supports theusage of RGB composite imagery, and can beaccessed at:https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jmaeng/satellite/VLab/RGB_QG.html

JMA online
updatesatellite

imagery

JMA updated its online satellite imagery disastermitigation content and other information on 24
February 2021. New satellite imagery was provided
to facilitate scrolling and zooming via a new URL
and true-color reproduction imagery developed via
collaboration between the JMA Meteorological
Satellite Center and the NOAA/NESDIS/STAR
GOES-R Algorithm Working Group imagery team.
The real-time JMA Meteorological Satellite Center
imagery remains the same.
New JMA satellite imagery:https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#contents=hi
mawari&lang=en
JMA Meteorological Satellite Center real-time
imagery (no change):https://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/data/himawari/index.html(Takuya SAKASHITA, JMA)

- 5 -Members of the Coordination Group

From the Co-editors

JAPAN (Co-coordinator)
Mr Kotaro BESSHO
Senior Coordinator for Satellite Systems
Satellite Program Division
Japan Meteorological Agency

The co-editors invite contributions to the newsletter.
Although it is assumed that the major contributors forthe time being will be satellite operators, we also
welcome articles (short contributions of less than apage are fine) from all RA II Members, regardless ofwhether they are registered with the WMO Secretariat
as members of the WIGOS Project CoordinatingGroup. We look forward to receiving your contributions
to the newsletter.
(Dohyeong KIM, KMA, and Kotaro BESSHO, JMA)REPUBLIC OF KOREA (Co-coordinator)
Dr Dohyeong KIM
Director of Satellite Operation Division,National Meteorological Satellite Center
Korea Meteorological Administration

RA II WIGOS Project Home Page
CHINA
Mr Xiang FANG
Director, Remote Sensing Data Application
National Satellite Meteorological Center
China Meteorological Administration

http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/satellite/ra
2wigosproject/ra2wigosproject-intro_en_jma.
Html

Editorials and Inquiries
INDIA
Dr. Sunil Kumar PESHINHead of Satellite Division
India Meteorological Department
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Ms Tatiana BOURTSEVA
Chief, Information Department

Kotaro BESSHO (Mr.)
Senior Coordinator for Satellite SystemsSatellite Program Division
Observation Department
Japan Meteorological Agency
1-3-4 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8122, JapanDr Oleg POKROVSKIY
Principal Scientist, Main Geophysical Observatory
ROSHYDROMET

Tel: +81-3-3212-8341
Fax: +81-3-3217-1036
Email: kbessho@met.kishou.go.jp

EUMETSAT (Observer)
Dr Kenneth HOLMLUND
Chief Scientist
EUMETSAT

Dohyeong KIM (Dr.)
Director of Satellite Operation Division,
National Meteorological Satellite Center
Korea Meteorological Administration
64-18 Guam-gil, Gwanghyewon, Jincheon,
Chungbuk, 365-830, Republic of Korea
Tel: +82-43-717-0251
Fax: +82-43-717-0240
Email: dkim@kma.go.kr(Editor-in-chief of this issue: Dohyeong KIM)

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