The development and use of graphical programs for real-time and long-term monitoring of environmental satellite products with the NOAA Products Validation System (NPROVS)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NOAA/NESDIS) produces operational global temperature and moisture soundings from several polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites. Within the NESDIS Office of SaTellite Applications and Research (STAR), the function of centralized scientific monitoring and validation of operational atmospheric derived product systems for Advanced-TOVS (ATOVS), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Microwave Integrated retrieval System (MIRS), GOES, Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) and Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) is provided by the NOAA Products Validation System (NPROVS). As part of the NPROVS effort, a suite of graphical programs has been created to allow users to monitor the NPROVS system and to evaluate the data produced by the system.

The following report summarizes the NPROVS graphical programs. An overview of the basic capabilities of each program is presented with an emphasis on changes and additions made over the past year. One important addition is a new tool, the NPROVS Archive Summary System (NARCS), which was created to provide a long-term trending overview of the quality of data produced by all satellite systems in NPROVS. Other changes, including the display of radiosonde balloon drift patterns, are also summarized and their importance to NPROVS is discussed.

In addition to the overview of the graphical programs, this report describes how each program is used to provide different viewpoints of the NPROVS data including long-term statistical trends, daily comparisons of individual satellite collocations, and global images of all satellite-produced parameters. Also discussed is the manner in which the individual graphical programs are used in combination to quickly identify and assess potential problems in both the NPROVS system and in the quality of the satellite data.