Vertical profiles of latent heating are derived from GOES-16 to be used in convective initialization. They are compared with other latent heating products derived from NEXRAD and GPM satellites, and the results show that their values are very similar to the radar-derived products. Finally, using latent heating derived from GOES-16 for convective initialization shows improvements in precipitation forecasts, which are comparable to the results using latent heating derived from NEXRAD.

Latent heating released from phase changes of water is an important factor in driving convection, and thus used in short-term weather forecast models to initiate convection. Typically, radars have been used to retrieve latent heating to be used in the forecast model, but continuous radar data are only available over land. Therefore, this study uses geostationary satellite data to retrieve latent heating so that it can be used to initiate convection in regions where radar data are not available.

This study suggests two methods to detect convection using 1 min data from GOES-16: one method detects early convective clouds using their vertical growth rate and the other method detects mature convective clouds using their lumpy cloud top surfaces. Applying the two methods to 1-month data showed that the accuracy of the combined methods was 85.8 % and showed their potential to be used in regions where radar data are not available.