New Satellite Observations for Monitoring and Forecasting Hurricanes and Severe Storms

ATMS, CrIS, VIIRS and OMPS are passive remote sensing instruments on board the Joint Polar satellite System (JPSS) satellites. These instruments are well calibrated and the data collected from them are very suitable for severe storm monitoring. It is shown that ATMS derived temperature fields can depict the hurricane warm core structures and can be used to monitor the storm intensity evolution. VIIRS Day and Night Band (DNB) observations are also excellent data sources for observing the hurricanes during the night through the moonlight reflected by clouds. To improve the forecasting accuracy for hurricane track and intensity, thermal channel radiances from ATMS and CrIS have been directly assimilated into global and regional numerical weather prediction models. Assimilation of ATMS data in Hurricane WRF (HWRF) resulted in large positive impacts on hurricane track forecasts. However, the impacts from assimilation of CrIS are inferior to those obtained from ATMS. This may be due largely to the quality control of CrIS radiances in optically thin cloudy conditions. To prepare the HWRF readiness for direct assimilation of GOES-R ABI radiances, we used GOES-13/15 and Himawari-8 imager (AHI) data as ABI proxy. It is demonstrated that assimilation of GOES imager radiances in HWRF can significantly improve the hurricane track and intensity forecasts when HWRF is initialized with an asymmetric vortex. Finally, a plan for assimilation of infrared cloudy radiances is discussed and the outstanding issues in cloudy radiative transfer are also presented.