Near-Real-Time Processing Plans for Aura MLS Data for Use in Data Assimilation

The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) aboard the Aura satellite, launched July 15, 2004, has already obtained 3 years of daily global atmospheric data. The dataset includes temperature, geopotential height, and a number of constituents such as O3, H2O, CO, N2O, HNO3, HCl, ClO, BrO, OH, HO2, with retrievals spanning the upper troposphere to the mesosphere (or higher) in some cases. Close to 3500 profiles are retrieved (per product) each day; ice water content (IWC) and ice water path (IWP) information is also obtained. A significant amount of these 3 years of data has been reprocessed using the version 2.2 algorithms (the 2nd public release of MLS data). Several groups have already done experiments using MLS data, especially O3 and temperature, in assimilation The MLS team is working on a fast but accurate production stream for a select number of products (mainly T, O3, and H2O), in order to enable near-real-time processing and data assimilation using some of the MLS capabilities. We discuss the plans for creating such a data stream from MLS and early test results using a preliminary subset as an example.