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Including a 13.3 micron channel on the GOES imagers significantly increases both the areal and temporal coverage available for deriving cloud products such as cloud top pressure and amount. Every three hours, an imager-based product will provide nearly full-disk coverage compared with the sounder-based products that cover only portions of North America at hourly intervals.
The Satellite Cloud Product (SCP) that complements the ground-based ASOS (Automated Surface Observing System) will also benefit from the imager's increased spatial resolution (4x8 km for the GOES-12 13.3 micron image channel versus 10 km for the equivalent GOES sounder channel), as well as the increased areal and temporal coverage.
Further improvements in the 13.3 micron channel's resolution to 2x4 km are expected with the GOES-O/P imagers.