Improvements in GOES/GOES-R water vapor calibration and validation

Calibration and validation (Cal/Val) of GOES-R moisture products will be challenging. This is primarily because temperature and humidity retrievals using the limited number of infrared channels on the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) will require the use of a numerical weather prediction model to provide the first guess for profile estimation. Over the last several years, NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory has been investigating aspects of this problem including the characterization of systematic errors in operational NWP models that may be used for this purpose as well as the error characteristics of current GOES and GOES-R proxy TPW products themselves. In this paper, we will summarize our major findings and make specific recommendations to improve GOES water vapor products made by existing and next generation satellite sensors in geostationary Earth orbit.