Small vertically-plotted numbers above the bars give the plotted values. The reason for the differing effect on different GOES channels is due mainly to the fact that the noise level of some of the Sounder channels is larger than the limiting precision of 8-bit data. But for other channels the noise is smaller than the limiting precision of 1-byte data. For these channels a 2-byte representation offers an advantage in noise reduction. The differing effects will be explained in more detail below.
Separate columns give the noise in both counts and temperature units as well.
A single measurement cannot be determined to any better precision. However for the 1-byte representation in the 3rd column the noise in a few Sounder channels approaches that digitization limit. Several other channels have low noise as well, although not down to the digitization level. The channels with low noise may be limited by the digitization into 8-bits. By looking back at the count noise for 2-byte data in the 2nd column it may be possible to determine which channels may be so affected.