An Air Quality Proving Ground (AQPG) for GOES-R

A consortium of Universities are expected to be awarded an Air Quality Proving Ground for the GOES-R ABI instrument. Led by UMBC and University of Alabama Huntsville, the Proving Ground will provide the first steps to building a user community who will be prepared to use the ABI data in near-real time for air quality forecasting and analysis needs. Based on the currently successful, IDEA product, the AQPG will evolve a product delivery system so that regional air quality forecasters have access to measurements from GOES-R, from ground based sites, and from models to better predict particulate air quality in the US. The Year 1 activities of the Proving Ground will be to gather user driven ("pull") guidance on the understanding of the ABI product and how it would be used in such a forecast system. To that end, a workshop will be held in September 2009 to form a AQPG User Group who will advise the project in the future. Evolving from the current Three-Dimensional Air Quality System User Group and adding members from the NWS Forecast Guidance User community, these advisers will be tested by determining their assessment of ABI proxy data which has been and will be processed in the future. Using known data sets from existing satellite, ground based remote sensing, ground based air quality and models, at least ten case studies will be created which exercise the ABI algorithm and allow the User Group to comment on whether those data would be used in their forecast tasks.