Radar and Satellite Analysis

Overview

Analyze radar and satellite weather products as remote-sensing observations, not as ground truth. Validate scan time, geometry, calibration, quality flags, and coverage before interpreting a feature. Then separate what the instrument directly measures from what a meteorological inference suggests.

This skill consumes already retrieved and decoded products. Use it after noaa-radar-satellite-fetching or an equivalent source-specific skill. It does not discover buckets, download files, repair outages, or make a product scientifically suitable by naming it radar or satellite data.

When to Use This Skill

• Interpret NEXRAD reflectivity, velocity, spectrum width, or multi-moment volumes.
• Track storm growth, decay, splits, mergers, rotation, anvils, or cloud-top evolution over time.
• Analyze GOES visible, infrared, water-vapor, or derived cloud and convection products.
• Combine radar structure with satellite cloud-top evidence while preserving each sensor's limitations.
• Produce a short-term precipitation or severe-weather nowcast from a sequence of observations.
• Explain why a radar or satellite feature is—or is not—supported by the data.

Do not infer a surface hail size, wind speed, rainfall rate, or lightning count from a single proxy without stating the retrieval assumptions. Do not use a single still image to claim a storm's future track or intensity.

Define the Remote-Sensing Analysis Contract

Before interpreting pixels, beams, or profiles, record:

• event, target phenomenon, region, and UTC interval;
• radar site, product level, scan/volume interval, elevation angles, moments, and resolution—or satellite platform, product, sector, channel, scan mode, and resolution;
• the measurement height or viewing geometry;
• the quality masks, calibration or scaling, and missing-data policy;
• the temporal cadence and the allowed lag between radar, satellite, observations, and model guidance;
• the feature definition and the expected output: structure, motion, intensity proxy, nowcast, or uncertainty map;
• the criteria for a confident, tentative, or inconclusive interpretation.

Keep observation time, scan start/end time, file creation time, retrieval time, and analysis time separate. A file created quickly after a scan is not a newer measurement.

Validate the Products Before Interpretation

Common checks

1. Confirm the radar site or physical satellite, product identity, sector, channel or moment, and expected dimensions from the decoded metadata.
2. Verify the time interval, scan start and end, coordinate reference system, and geolocation. For GOES fixed grids, use the product's geostationary projection metadata rather than treating scan x and y as latitude and longitude.
3. Apply the product's documented scale, offset, fill values, calibration, and quality flags before computing statistics or thresholds.
4. Inspect missing scans, partial volumes, data gaps, saturated or invalid values, and spatial coverage. Do not smooth over a gap without labeling it.
5. Record the resolution, footprint, and observation uncertainty. A high pixel count is not a high spatial resolution if the beam or channel is coarse.

Radar-specific checks

• Confirm site, volume start/end time, sweep count, moments, and elevation angles. Level II, Level III, and real-time chunk products are not interchangeable encodings.
• Account for range-dependent beam width, beam height above the radar, terrain blockage, range folding, attenuation, clutter, anomalous propagation, and velocity dealiasing where relevant.
• Determine whether a feature is sampled by one low-level sweep, several elevation angles, or a full vertical column. Do not compare a low-level echo top with a satellite cloud top as if they were the same physical surface.
• Keep base reflectivity, column-integrated liquid, echo top, and derived products distinct. Their thresholds and physical meanings are not interchangeable.

Satellite-specific checks

• Confirm platform, instrument, product short name, channel or RGB product, sector, scan mode, and scan interval from file attributes.
• Apply channel-specific calibration and quality flags. Brightness temperature, reflectance, cloud-top temperature, and land-surface temperature are different quantities.
• Treat cloud-top parallax as a viewing-geometry problem. A high cloud can be

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