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Full catalog/GK2A PDS
GK2A PDS·dataset

Asia-Pacific weather satellite imagery (Korea's GK-2A)

Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) GK-2A Satellite Data
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. Frequent satellite images of clouds, storms, and atmospheric conditions over Asia and the Pacific, in 4 visible and 12 infrared channels. It scans the full Earth disk every 10 minutes and the Korean Peninsula every 2 minutes, and also watches space-weather conditions.

How it's made. Captured by the Advanced Meteorological Imager aboard Korea's geostationary GK-2A satellite; NOAA hosts the data in cooperation with the Korea Meteorological Administration.

How & where you'd use it. Tracking typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and severe weather across the Asia-Pacific region.

What's measured

aws-pdsagriculturegeospatialweatherearth observationmeteorologicaldisaster responsesatellite imagery

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The Geo-KOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) is the new generation geostationary meteorological satellite (located in 128.2°E) of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). The main mission of the GK2A is to observe the atmospheric phenomena over the Asia-Pacific region. The Advance Meteorological Imager (AMI) on GK2A scan the Earth full disk every 10 minutes and the Korean Peninsula area every 2 minutes with a high spatial resolution of 4 visible channels and 12 infrared channels. In addition, the AMI has an ability of flexible target area scanning useful for monitoring severe weather events such as typhoon and volcanic eruption and so on. And for space weather mission, the Korea Space wEather Monitor (KSEM) on the GK2A observes the space environment with the particle detector, magnetometer and charging monitor. For questions regarding GK2A imagery specifications, visit the GK2A site at https://nmsc.kma.go.kr/enhome/html/base/cmm/selectPage.do?page=satellite.gk2a.intro. To view the GK2A Fact Sheet please visit https://nmsc.kma.go.kr/enhome/html/base/cmm/selectPage.do?page=satellite.gk2a.fact. NOAA provides access to GK2A data on AWS in coordination with the Korean Meteorlogical Administration.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).