Monitoring and Validation of NOAA AMSU-based Hydrological Products

NOAA has been producing operational hydrological products (e.g., rain rate, snow cover, total precipitable water, cloud and ice water path, sea-ice concentration, land surface temperature and emissivity) from the POES-based Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) since 1999 through a system known as the Microwave Surface and Precipitation Products System (MSPPS). These products have undergone an evolution toward more advanced algorithms since that time and now utilize both the AMSU-A and -B sensors. Critical to the success of these products, now being generated for all three NOAA POES (e.g., NOAA-15, -16 and -17), has been the use of automated, web-based monitoring and validation tools (URL: http://www.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/corp/scsb/mspps/main.html). These include image comparisons (both static and animations), daily zonal mean profiles and time series plots of the zonal means versus other satellite-derived products and ancillary data sets. Additionally, the AMSU-A sensor exhibits an "asymmetric" behavior (e.g., inconsistent brightness temperatures across the scan), which significantly impacts several of the products. Empirical corrections have been developed by NESDIS scientists that are closely monitored through our web-based tools. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the status of MSPPS and illustrate the vital role that web-based monitoring and validation has provided.