The MSPPS project is designed to retrieve operational near-real-time surface and precipitation products using AMSU data, especially in cloudy regions where visible and infrared instruments have decreased capability. Since its inception in 1995, the project has seen two launches of NOAA polar satellites carrying AMSU instruments, and has increased the number of generated products from five at its Day-1 stage, to ten at its Day-2 stage. The Day-1 system became operational in January 2000, and the Day-2 system, which will replace the Day-1 system, is scheduled to go operational in mid-2001. This poster will focus on the introduction of the MSPPS Day-2 system. The Day-2 product suite includes total precipitable water, cloud liquid water, ice water path, rain rate, snow cover, sea ice concentration, surface temperature, and emissivity at 23.8 GHz, 31.4 GHz, and 50.3 GHz. The product retrievals apply physically-based, multispectral algorithms with higher resolution and higher sensitivity compared to the Day-1 products. Algorithms for new products such as snow depth and soil moisture are also being developed.

The MSPPS system takes Level-1 data from AMSU instruments on board both NOAA-15 and NOAA-16 satellites, and generates and outputs products as Level-2 swaths and Level-3 grid maps. The standard output data format for the project is NASA's HDF-EOS. The near-real-time Level-2 data include an HDF-EOS swath and a binary swath. The Level-3 data are composed of a near-real-time 16th mesh polar stereographic map and a global geographic map; both maps are in HDF-EOS format. The MSPPS output data are used by various agencies inside NOAA for research and application purposes.

The Day-2 products are currently undergoing an extensive validation process where comparisons with products from other sources (e.g., other satellites, radar, models) are performed using images/statistics/case studies. Additionally, many visualization tools have been developed for the project to enable algorithm and system performance monitoring. The products are compared to other independent data sources on the project web site (orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/arad2/MSPPS) and the images and graphs are updated daily.

This poster will depict the processes involved in the MSPPS Day-2 system. A flowchart of the system and some sample product images and comparisons with other sources will also be included.