The RDT product

Météo-France has developped the Rapid Developing Thunderstorm (RDT) product in the framework of the SAF Nowcasting.

In these pages, Météo-France displays a demo of the RDT product over African domains

The proposed RDT products are processed in MF centre of Lannion from infrared Meteosat satellite data.

For a Meteosat scanning ending (North Pole) at HHmm,

the corresponding RDT is available at HHmm+ [6-9] min
the post processing is run at HHmm + 8 min, and the visualisation package is available at about HHmm + [15] min

The RDT product is an object-oriented diagnostic which provides an help to forecasters for real-time analysis and automatic warning of convection. The product is delivered to the user's system as numerical data, coded in BUFR format, describing convective systems as objects with their most relevant properties (size, movement, minimum temperature, cooling rate, area extension rate...).

The RDT software performs an efficient detection, tracking and discrimination of convective systems using infrared images of the IR10.8 channel of geostationnary satellites. During the development phase of the SAF Nowcasting, its design focused on the earliness of detection and tracking of clouds. The quality reached shows that this software allows to satisfactory track convective systems as small as few pixels large.

Beyond the SAF framework, Météo-France uses the RDT product as input to convective nowcasting tools.
This includes the use of the RDT product :

as an analysis tool for the forecaster through a user-friendly visualization
as a corner stone for further data fusion in thunderstorm monitoring and warning (Convective Objects for NOwcasting objects )
as input to a significant weather objet-oriented nowcasting system incorporating expertise (SIGOONS project).

  

© 2002 Météo-France