Correcting Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Imager Data for the Production of Vivid True-Color Imagery

Observations of top-of-atmosphere radiances from the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) blue, green, and red spectral bands can be used to produce high-temporal-resolution, true-color imagery at 1-km spatial resolution over the Asia-Pacific region. To enhance interpretability and aesthetic appearance of these images, the top-of-atmosphere radiance data are processed to remove the Rayleigh-scattered atmospheric component, corrected for limb effects, blended with brightness temperature data from a thermal infrared window band at night, and the resultant imagery adjusted to optimize contrast. The contribution of Rayleigh scattering to the AHI observations is calculated by interpolating radiative transfer parameters from a preconstructed set of lookup tables, which are specifically created for the Himawari-8 AHI instrument. A surface reflectance value for each pixel is calculated after the Rayleigh contribution is removed. The spectrally dependent reflectance values produced from the lookup table differ from the exact calculation by up to 18% at the planetary limb, over 100% at the solar terminator, and by less than 0.5% at low to moderate solar and sensor zenith angles. The subsequent corrections applied for limb effects mitigate the areas with high interpolation error, which slightly reduces the spatial coverage, but provides Rayleigh-corrected surface reflectance products that have interpolation errors at or below 0.5%. Resolution sharpening increases the nominal pixel size from 1000 to 500 m while still producing sharp images. The resultant images are colorful, visually intuitive, high contrast, and of sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to provide a unique and complementary observational tool for use by weather forecasters and the general public alike.