  A suite of products has been developed and evaluated to assess hazards
presented by convective downbursts to aircraft in flight derived from the
current generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The
existing suite of GOES microburst products employs the GOES sounder to
calculate risk based on conceptual models of favorable environmental profiles
for convective downburst generation. Large output values of the microburst
index algorithms indicate that the ambient thermodynamic structure of the
troposphere fits the prototypical environment for each respective microburst
type. Accordingly, a new diagnostic nowcasting product, the Microburst
Windspeed Potential Index, is derived from merging existing algorithms and
designed to quantify the most relevant factors in convective downburst
generation in intermediate thermodynamic environments. This paper provides an
initial assessment of the MWPI algorithm, presents case studies demonstrating
effective operational use of the MWPI product, and presents validation results
for the 2007 convective season.
