NOAA's near-real time data products from NPP and NPOESS

NOAA's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Data Exploitation (NDE) project will provide operational civilian users of environmental satellite information with data from NPOESS and the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP). Through NDE, users can continue to receive polar-orbiting satellite data to maintain their current missions, or take advantage of the improved and expanded suite of products that the NPOESS-era sensors will provide. NDE will receive environmental, sensor, and temperature data records from NPP and NPOESS and tailor them to satisfy user-required attributes such as data format, coverage, frequency, and map projection. NDE will also apply value-added science algorithms to certain data records to generate NOAA-unique products (NUPs) in order to meet NOAA-unique mission requirements. The initial focus of NOAA-unique products will be atmospheric sounding products, microwave surface and precipitation products, and derived sea surface temperature products such as anomalies and coral reef bleaching indices and alerts. Subsequent NUPs will include polar winds, vegetation health, ocean color, and atmospheric chemistry data records. This paper describes the phased development and introduction of NPP products, plans for staging NPP data to support operational users, and the NDE efforts to prepare end users to access and evaluate NPP and NPOESS products.