Abstract
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center (SPoRT) has been part of a collaborative effort within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program to develop gridded satellite sounding retrievals for the operational weather forecasting community. The NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) retrieves vertical profiles of temperature, water vapor, trace gases, and cloud properties derived from infrared and microwave sounder measurements. A new, optimized method for deriving NUCAPS level 2 horizontally and vertically gridded products is described here. This work represents the development of approaches to better synthesize remote sensing observations that ultimately increase the availability and usability of NUCAPS observations. This approach, known as “Gridded NUCAPS”, was developed to more effectively visualize NUCAPS observations to aid in the quick identification of thermodynamic spatial gradients. Gridded NUCAPS development was based on operations-to-research feedback and is now part of the operational National Weather Service display system. In this paper, we discuss how Gridded NUCAPS was designed, how relevant atmospheric fields are derived, its operational application in pre-convective weather forecasting, and several emerging applications that expand the utility of NUCAPS for monitoring phenomena such as fire weather, the Saharan Air Layer, and stratospheric air intrusions.
Highlights
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program has fostered the development and application of satellite sounding retrievals for the benefit of end users though a “Sounding Initiative” and competitively funded projects
The derived products presented represent the novel development of fields not traditionally derived from hyperspectral infrared sounder observations and new concepts/methods to support applications related to short-term weather forecasting and analysis
We focus here on the NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) retrieved profiles of temperature, moisture, and ozone from Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) on the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) and NOAA-20 platforms
Summary
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program has fostered the development and application of satellite sounding retrievals for the benefit of end users though a “Sounding Initiative” and competitively funded projects. The implementation of the NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS; [2,3,4]) soundings in the United States NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) operational environment inspired much of the work within the JPSS PGRR Sounding Initiative, including the product design and applications that we discuss in this paper. The optimization of basic gridding and interpolation methodologies as appropriately applied to NUCAPS data retains their observational characteristics and enables state-of-the-art product development to further support their application in weather analysis and forecasting, allowing the capability to add or develop new derived products . The derived products presented represent the novel development of fields not traditionally derived from hyperspectral infrared sounder observations and new concepts/methods to support applications related to short-term weather forecasting and analysis
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
