Abstract:
The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has, in archive, both digital data and hard-copy images from early VISSR (Visible and Infra-Red Spin Scan Radiometer) sensors on board the early Synchronous Meteorological Satellites (SMS) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). VISSR was on two SMS satellites, SMS-1/2, and the first six GOES satellites, GOES-1/6. GOES-4/6 were
... equipped with the VAS (VISSR Atmospheric Sounder), which routinely produced VISSR data and vertical soundings through the atmosphere. The geographic area covered was North and South America, the Northern and Southern Atlantic Ocean, and the Northeastern and Southeastern Pacific Ocean. The data period was July 1976 through September 1988. The GOES geostationary platform repeated the same field of view every half hour. For severe weather, the VISSR data was obtained every 3 to 5 minutes for a small area containing the weather of interest. VISSR/VAS was a scanning radiometer, with channels in the visible and IR (10 to 12 micrometer region for VISSR data) portions of the spectrum. The sensor produced 1 km visible data at 6 bit precision and 8 km IR data at 8 bit precision. The documentation contained in VISSR data included earth location references. Sensor calibration information is available separately. The VISSR archive file consists of a series of VISSR frames, wherein each frame contains the visible and IR data from one complete view of the earth from one satellite. Each frame consists of a series of records containing the visible and/or IR data from one East-West scan; the full earth view includes about 16,000 visible scan lines (each containing 16,000 data values) and about 1,800 IR scan lines (each containing 3,800 data values). Each scan contains documentation. 
