Impacts of Future High Temporal Resolution Advanced Sounding Systems on Local Severe Storm Forecast—A Quick Regional OSSE Demonstration

The advanced infrared (IR) and microwave (MW) sounding systems onboard polar orbit satellites have been providing atmospheric sounding information critical for now-casting and improving weather forecasting through data assimilation in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. Now the advanced IR sounding system is also onboard a geostationary satellite, which provides sounding information with high temporal resolution over a region. In recent years, advanced technology IR and MW sounder systems have been proposed to be deployed onboard CubeSats—a much cheaper and more flexible solution than ordinary satellite sounding systems. Since multiple CubeSats are affordable, they can also provide higher temporal resolution. Quick regional Observing System Simulation Experiments (r-OSSE) were carried out to evaluate the impact for local severe storm (LSS) forecasts of advanced GEO IR sounders and the CubeSat-based advanced MW and IR sounders, including the Micro-sized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite-2 (MicroMAS-2), the CubeSat Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (CIRAS), and the Earth Observing Naosatellite-Microwave (EON-MW). Additional experiments examine the impact of CubeSats in mitigating the potential data gap due to the loss of the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) onboard Suomi-NPP and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) series. Impacts were assessed for four different sounding systems (GEO IR sounder, MicroMAS-2, CIRAS, and EON-MW). Impacts on LSS forecast skill for different CubeSat orbit configurations (i.e., single orbit versus multiple orbits) are also assessed.