Suggestion: Add new layer for cloud top pressure

[hangInThere]

Currently, the IR satellite images only colorize the high altitude clouds while giving grayscale to mid and low altitude clouds. I would suggest adding a completely new layer for cloud top pressure to cover the entire range of hPa values from 100 to 1050 and adopt the color scale built from purple, black, blue, green, brown, and red and within each color apply grayscale, like what the Korea Meteological Agency does in its Image Viewer (https://nmsc.kma.go.kr/enhome/html/satellite/viewer/selectSatViewerEnhome.do?dataType=gk2a# ). With this layer, one can see all levels of clouds at once. For example, this past afternoon there were simultaneously high & mid altitude clouds from the west and low altitude clouds from the east over mid Sumatera Island, but none of the Blue/Visible/IR satellite image layers can distinguish the mid from the low altitude clouds, whereas the KMA's Cloud Top Pressure product does it so well. Go see it for yourself. Set the time to 1020 UTC and duration to "Last 12 Hrs". Try it. You will find that in such complex multi-layer cloud flow situation their color codes perform really well.

[Wheats]

@hangInThere
You can change the colour scales yourself in settings. It's based on Temperature, not pressure because it's infrared so you may have to do some mental activity to get it how you'd like it.

Good luck!
Hope that helps!

[anthony10]

@hangInThere I would like to see a few more layers for INFRA+ satellite too because the Low & Mids are getting missed.

Or other users color scales from the Import/Export viewer.

[hangInThere]

@Wheats
Thanks much! That should do it.

[hangInThere]

@hangInThere
Okay, this is what I do for now:

[[0,[24,24,24,255]],
[38.67625899280576,[240,240,240,255]],
[40.51798561151079,[229,172,255,255]],
[53.410071942446045,[183,95,226,255]],
[79.19424460431655,[149,38,205,255]],
[81.03597122302158,[64,64,163,255]],
[106.82014388489209,[70,106,227,255]],
[130.76258992805757,[49,153,231,255]],
[154.70503597122303,[41,187,246,255]],
[186,[163,253,61,255]],
[195,[237,208,59,255]],
[205,[251,128,34,255]],
[214,[210,49,4,255]],
[223,[122,4,3,255]],
[256,[48,0,0,255]]]

which results in this color scale:

and the IR image:

Instead of cloud top pressure, the color scale goes by cloud top temperature in Kelvins.

Here, ground temperature is around 25 degC, i.e. 298K, and assuming 6.5K drop in temperature for every 1km increase of altitude, low clouds with top below 1km should read higher than about 291K, thus colored in the lightest purple or even white.

The temperatures in the color scale need to be adjusted by however much the ground temperature is higher or lower than 25 degC. Obviously if the ground is 40 degC like in Europe's summer 2022 (15 degrees on top of 25 degC) we will be making an error in cloud altitude of more than 2km and mistaken mid altitude clouds for low altitude if the color scale's temperatures aren't adjusted accordingly.

If someone can improve further, please post a reply below.

[hangInThere]

@Wheats @Ondřej-Šutera
Is there a way to redefine the colors for the Satellite Visible & Blue layers? The lowest level clouds are too dark in Visible that they become barely discernible.

[Gkikas LGPZ]

@hangInThere
You can find cloud top pressure, by comparing cloud top temperature (from satellite) with temperature from sounding.
https://community.windy.com/topic/8960/suggestion-ability-to-change-units-in-infra/4?_=1681035917165