GOES-17 ABI Mode 3 cooling timeline implementation

This is to mitigate the number of saturated images resulting from the loop heat pipe (LHP) temperature regulation anomaly.

For more information, see: GOES-17 ABI Performance

This cooling timeline will occur seasonally in operations for four periods each year. Below is the remaining predicted period for 2021:

• 10 October–11 November 2021

During this period, every day between 06:00 and 12:00 UTC, GOES-17 operations mode will change from Mode 6 to Mode 3. This will affect the EUMETCast distribution of ABI data as follows:

• Full disc scans will be available every 15 minutes during the Mode 3 operations (instead of every 10 minutes for the Mode 6 operations).
• The change to Mode 3 also means that there will be a temporary filename change of GOES-17 ABI data:
  • For Level 1B data, filenames will start with ‘OR_ABI-L1b-RadF-M3C<channel number>_G17_’ instead of ‘OR_ABI-L1b-RadF-M6<channel number>_G17_’
  • For Level 2 products (All-Sky Radiance and Clear-Sky Radiance), ‘M6’ in the filenames will become ‘M3’:
    All-Sky Radiance (ASR): ABI-L2-ASRF-M3_v2r1_g17_s202102260600359_e202102260611126_c202102260623060.bufr
    Clear-Sky Radiance (CSR): ABI-L2-CSRF-M3_v2r1_g17_s202102260600359_e202102260611126_c202102260623050.bufr

GOES-17 L2 products (ASR/CSR) are missing every day in the window 10:30–17:00 UTC. The window in which they are missing every day varies and gets smaller towards the end and after the mode 3 cooling campaign.

Users wishing to receive the Mode 3 15-minute data should contact our User Service Helpdesk.