NASA SPoRT Modeling and Data Assimilation Research and Transition Activities

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) program has a rich portfolio of modeling and data assimilation activities aimed at using satellite-derived observations to improve land surface and atmospheric numerical weather prediction (NWP). SPoRT generates real-time, research satellite products from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instruments including: (1) 2-km northwestern-hemispheric sea surface temperature composite, (2) daily, MODIS green vegetation fraction (GVF) over CONUS, and (3) NASA Land Information System (LIS) runs of the Noah land surface model over the southeastern United States. These datasets are available to partnering National Weather Service partners for and for use by forecasters for local modeling and situational awareness. SPoRT is engaged in data assimilation research with the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) and Ensemble Kalman Filter in LIS for soil moisture data assimilation. Ongoing data assimilation projects using GSI include assimilation of hyperspectral infrared retrieved profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) to improve analysis of warm-sector, pre-frontal conditions and analysis of extra-tropical cyclones with intense non-convective winds. As part of its Early Adopter activities for the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, SPoRT is assimilating soil moisture retrievals from the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) as a precursor to assimilation of observations from SMAP later this year. Through experiments using WRF-Chem, SPoRT has also begun integration of a real-time aerosol optical depth product using MODIS and VIIRS data. SPoRT has also incorporated real-time global GVF data into LIS and WRF from the VIIRS product being developed by NOAA/NESDIS. This poster will highlight the research and transition activities SPoRT conducts using WRF, LIS, and GSI, with a focus on generation of a new real-time forecast system that combines the aforementioned real-time and research activities into a single system for demonstration of NASA datasets and their impact on NWP.