The New Operational GOES Merged Sounder Product System (MSPS) at NOAA/NESDIS

Since 1995, The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) has produced, on a operational basis every hour, a variety of retrieved atmospheric and surface quantities from GOES sounder measurements taken from the GOES-E and GOES-W satellites. Specifically, the sounder products generated include: clear-sky radiances, precipitable water (PW), vertical profiles of temperature and moisture, surface skin temperature, cloud-top information (pressure, temperature, and amount), and atmospheric stability indices including lifted index and Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE). The resolution of the operational GOES sounder products is approximately 50km x 50km, with the exception of the cloud product which are generated at full resolution (10km). The products are provided in a variety of formats including text, BUFR and Derived Product Image (DPI) format. The precipitable water and clear-sky radiance products are assimilated into the operational numerical weather prediction models (NWP) run by the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). In October 2002, the GOES sounder retrieved products have been added to the National Weather Service (NWS) Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS).

The 50km x 50km resolution GOES sounder products continue to serve the needs of the user community. However, the advent of higher resolution NWP models and the need for higher resolution satellite products on AWIPS have led to new requirements for higher resolution GOES sounder products. This paper will highlight the work done in the Office of Research and Applications (ORA) and the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) to provide GOES sounder retrieved products at 10km resolution. A new GOES Merged Sounder Product System (MSPS) has been designed and developed in ORA to generate the entire suite of full resolution GOES sounder products in a consolidated, and scientifically consistent, way. The GOES MSPS product system will replace three independent operational GOES sounder product systems.

Products derived from the GOES MSPS have been validated against ground-based observations over the past two years. Validation results will be presented that demonstrate that these products compare as well or better to collocated ground-based measurements of PW than the current operational 50km x 50km resolution PW products do. Furthermore, examples will be shown to illustrate that these higher resolution products offer better coverage and improved depiction of gradient information than the current lower resolution operational products. Attention has been given not only to the quality of the products, but also to their timeliness, which users deem to be an important requirement for these products.

The GOES MSPS is more streamlined leading to more timely products, is more flexible in that new DPI products can easily be added and distributed to the user community, and is easier to maintain given that it consolidates several operational GOES sounder product production systems into one. Plans call for the GOES MSPS to replace the existing operational GOES product systems in late 2004.