Extended Abstract (300K)P2.3
Utilizing COSMIC radio occultation soundings to estimate convective potentials over oceans
Michael Kevin Hernandez, Univ. of Miami, Miami, FL; and Y. H. Kuo, D. C. Hunt, and R. Hauser
Over oceans, unpredicted thunderstorms can adversely affect airplane travel. To mitigate such hazards, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) asked the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to develop techniques that warn of imminent convection. The challenge: few traditional observations are taken over the ocean, and nowcasting techniques, which rely on Doppler weather radar, are not applicable. An atmospheric sounding technique, known as GPS radio occultation (RO), might offer a method for solving this problem. The six-satellite mission Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) provides approximately 2,500 vertical profiles of the Earth's atmosphere daily, uniformly distributed around the globe including the tropical ocean. These GPS RO soundings are of high vertical resolution and accuracy. With the use of one-dimensional variational retrieval, vertical profiles of temperature and moisture can be derived from COSMIC soundings. These profiles can be used to estimate convective potentials of the atmosphere that lie ahead of an airplane travelling over the ocean. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of calculated Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) and Convective Inhibition (CIN) from COSMIC GPS RO soundings against observations from balloon-based radiosonde soundings. This study will evaluate whether COSMIC-derived CAPE and CIN values are accurate enough to be useful for the FAA's over-ocean convective forecasting. If useful, this technique will eventually provide real-time CAPE and CIN value estimates globally.
Poster Session 2, IOAS Poster Session II: Observing Systems
Wednesday, 23 January 2008, 2:30 PM-4:00 PM, Exhibit Hall B
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