Using the New Capabilities of GOES-R to Improve Blended, Multisensor Total Precipitable Water Products for Forecasters

We pose this question: How can the increased temporal and spatial resolution of GOES-R be used to improve the usefulness of blended Total Precipitable Water (TPW) products for forecasters? Currently, GOES-R TPW retrievals are not included in the NOAA operational blended TPW. That product relies primarily on passive microwave retrievals (NOAA Microwave Integrated Retrieval System - MiRS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements over the CONUS. Research is in progress at CIRA under the GOES-R Risk Reduction program to incorporate GOES-R TPW into the blended TPW. The increased spatial and temporal resolution and especially the full disk coverage provide new opportunities to impact and improve the blended TPW product with GOES-R.

In order to best exploit the GOES-R capabilities, its error characteristics and sampling limits in cloudy areas must be reconciled with the heritage TPW inputs. Advances in advectively blending the TPW – using model winds to move the field to a common time as is done in the Morphed Integrated Microwave Imagery (MIMIC) TPW product – need to be incorporated along with forecaster feedback on desirable characteristics of the product.

Results showing GOES-R (GOES-16) TPW as compared to MiRS and GPS will be presented. Several blending approaches using the GOES data will be demonstrated. Metrics such as elimination of cloud-edge artifacts will be discussed.