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.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

The input data are Himawari-8 AHI retrievals, freely available from the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
Ancillary data come from OISST, GFS and NOAA daily 4km snow and Ice Cover: 
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 Extreme rainfall research program.

The data is available online on the NCI TDS server:

   https://dapds00.nci.org.au/thredds/catalog/gy85/Himawari8_AusGeo1-0-3/L2/catalog.html

and for NCI users in the gy85 project.

Files within this dataset are organised as follows:

/g/data/gy85/Himawari8_AusGeo1-0-3/v1-0/<level>/<summer>/<YYYYMM>/<files> contains the CF - ACDD compliant netcdf output

where
<level> is L1 or L2
<summer> is summer_year1-year2 as an example summer_2015-2016
<YYYYMM> is a specific month for that summer as <201602>

with filename format:
geocat<level>.HIMAWARI-8.<year><day>.<time>.FLDK.R20
where
<level> is L1 or L2
<year> is the year
<day> is the day of the year as 087
<time> is hour, minute and seconds in the day

as an example: geocatL2.HIMAWARI-8.2020091.230000.FLDK.R20

Contact: llopezbravo@student.unimelb.edu.au for any question on the dataset content and provenance
         paola.petrelli@utas.edu.au for questions or issues with file accessibility

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

Citation:
    Lopez-Bravo, Clemente, Vincent C.L., Huang, Y., 2021: Himawari-8 GeoCat 1.0.3 Australian Domain Level 2 v1.0 . NCI National Research Data Collection, doi:10.25914/60096228c7ec0, accessed on <date>