The Expected Impacts of NPOESS Microwave and Infrared Sounder Radiances on Operational Numerical Weather Prediction and Data Assimilation Systems
Abstract
The NPOESS atmospheric sounding functionality will be accomplished using two separate sensor suites, the combined infrared (IR) and microwave (MW) sensor suite (CrIMSS), and the Microwave Imager/Sounder (MIS) instrument. CrIMSS consists of the Cross Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and the cross track Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), and is scheduled to fly on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), and NPOESS operational flight units C1 and C3. The MIS is a conical scanning polarimetric imager and sounder patterned after the heritage WindSat, and DMSP Special Sensor Microwave Imagers and Sounders (SSMI and SSMIS), and is scheduled for flight units C2, C3 and C4. ATMS combines the current operational Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS), but with an additional channel in the 51.76 GHz oxygen absorption region and 3 additional channels in the 165.5 and 183 GHz water vapor absorption band. CrIS is a Fourier Transform Spectrometer and will provide 159 shortwave IR channels, 433 mid-range IR channels, and 713 longwave IR channels. The heritage sensors for CrIS are the NASA Advanced Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and the MetOp-A Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI). Both AIRS and IASI are high quality, high spectral resolution sounders which represent a significant improvement in the effective vertical resolution over previous IR sounders. This presentation will give an overview of preparations underway for day-1 monitoring of NPP/NPOESS radiances, and subsequent operational radiance assimilation. These preparations capitalize on experience gained during the pre-launch preparations, sensor calibration/validation and operational assimilation for the heritage sensors. One important step is to use pre-flight sensor channel specifications, noise estimates and knowledge of the antenna patterns, to generate and test proxy NPP/NPOESS sensor observations in existing assimilation systems. Other critical factors for successful radiance assimilation include low noise measurements, channel sets that span the vertical space defined within the NWP model, a fast and accurate radiative transfer model, and bias correction schemes designed to remove systematic biases in the departures between the observed versus calculated radiances.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFMIN32A..08S
- Keywords:
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- 1906 INFORMATICS / Computational models;
- algorithms;
- 3315 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Data assimilation;
- 3360 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Remote sensing