The NESDIS operational blended Total Precipitable Water products

The blended TPW products system merges the operationally available, individual TPW products from NOAA and DMSP low-earth-orbiting polar satellites and also from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the GOES Sounders over US to provide unified TPW and percentage of normal TPW products over the global ocean and over CONUS areas. These products have served the NOAA and private communities for years and have proved very useful to satellite analysts and NWS forecasters in improving the analysis and prediction of heavy precipitation and in providing more comprehensive, continuous spatial information about moisture transfer. On March 9, 2009, the blended TPW products system was implemented at the NESDIS Environmental Satellite Processing Center (ESPC) to provide real-time users up-to-date, accurate, and reliable products. The operational availability of the blended TPW products provides timely assistance to forecasters in assessing the evolution and transport of moisture, and also in predicting precipitation, especially extreme events such as heavy precipitation and flooding. The blended TPW products can also be accessed through http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/bTPW, where the web-based image animation loop provides users everywhere a tool for tracking atmospheric rivers/moisture plumes, over a specified time period for particular regions, which have been found to play a central role in modulating extreme rainfall events.

This paper will briefly review the operational generation, monitoring and distribution of blended TPW products, and will provide an updated status of the products for the forthcoming years. Application of the blended TPW products to analysis and forecasting of heavy precipitation and flooding will be discussed, and case studies showing their use for hazardous weather conditions will be presented.