Winds derived from geostationary satellite moisture channel observations: Applications and impact on numerical weather prediction

Abstract

Tropospheric motions deduced from sequential water vapor imagery provided by geostationary meteorological satellites can be utilized to infer wind fields. Temporal tracking of moisture features yields spatially coherent vector fields in both cloudy and cloud-free regimes. These observations can be employed to augment existing operationally-available data in order to provide improved upper-tropospheric wind analyses over meteorological scales ranging from sub-synoptic to global. It is demonstrated through assimilation of these data into numerical weather prediction systems that modest forecast improvements can be realized. Forecast impact experiments yield small but positive results in: 1) hurricane track forecasts, 2) regional-scale prediction, and 3) global-scale prediction. Ongoing research and future prospects are discussed.