Blended satellite products for operational forecasting

Forecasters need not observations from a single satellite, but meteorologically significant data fields blended from all available satellites. In this paper we detail our process for blending total precipitable water (TPW) data from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) instruments on three NOAA satellites with data from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) instruments on three Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites to form a unified product. The discussion includes ways to remove biases between different satellite sensors, mapping and compositing methods, and computer clustering and data management techniques. Nearly global, Mercator TPW composites are constructed hourly and made available in real time to forecasters at the Satellite Services Division of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.