13th Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography

P5.8

Status of the NOAA/NESDIS Operational Satellite Wind Product System: Recent Improvements, New Products, Product Quality, and Future Plans

Jaime M. Daniels, NOAA/NESDIS/ORA, Camp Springs, MD; and C. Velden, W. Bresky, and A. Irving

This paper provides a summary of the status of the NOAA/NESDIS operational satellite wind product system. Recent improvements, new additions, product quality assessment, and future plans of the Atmospheric Motion Vector (AMV) product suite will be discussed. GOES-10 still serves as the western operational geostationary satellite and GOES-9 has been activated to provide coverage over the western Pacific for the International community until MTSAT-1R is launched and readied for operational service. On April 1, 2003, GOES-12 replaced GOES-8 as the eastern operational geostationary satellite. The addition of the 13.3um channel on the GOES-12 imager has strengthened and improved the heights assigned to cloud tracers, and as a result, the quality of the GOES-12 cloud drift wind products. Validation results for the GOES-12 AMVs will be shown, along with a synopsis of our early experiences with the utilization of these products in operational Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems based on feedback from the ECMWF and UKMET. The 3.9um cloud drift wind product has now been transitioned into the operational environment at NOAA/NESDIS providing improved low-level cloud drift wind coverage at night in both the large scale and storm scale environments. These products are being made available for use in NWP assimilation systems and for use by National Weather Service (NWS) field forecasters. For the first time, AMVs derived from measurements taken from a polar orbiting satellite, are being planned to be transitioned into the operational NOAA/NESDIS AMV product suite. AMVs are currently being derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) polar orbiting Terra and Aqua satellites on an experimental basis at NOAA/NESDIS. MODIS AMVs are being routinely validated against radiosonde wind observations and NCEP/GFS wind analyses; these results will be discussed. Operational transition plans, which include product dissemination, will also be discussed.

extended abstract  Extended Abstract (380K)

Poster Session 5, Operational Products
Wednesday, 22 September 2004, 9:30 AM-11:00 AM

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