The Evolving Research to Operations Process for NOAA's Satellite Climate Data Records

As part of the provisional NOAA Climate Service, NOAA is providing leadership in the development of authoritative, measurement-based information on climate change and variability. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) recently initiated a satellite Climate Data Record Program (CDRP) to provide sustained and objective climate information derived from meteorological satellite data that NOAA has collected over the past 30+years. These are the longest sustained global measurement records in the world and represent billions of dollars of investment. NOAA is now applying advanced analysis methods -- which have improved remarkably over the last decade -- to these data. Data from other satellite programs, including NASA and international research programs and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), are also being used. This process will unravel the underlying climate trend and variability information and return new value from the records. In parallel, NCDC will extend these records by applying the same methods to present-day and future satellite measurements, including the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and Jason-3. In this presentation, we will describe the algorithm development activities that CDRP recently selected and funded through open competitions. We will also describe IT system development activities that will provide data processing and reprocessing, storage and management. We will also outline the maturing Program framework, including the strategies for coding and development standards, community reviews, independent program oversight, and research-to-operations algorithm migration and execution. Finally, we will address out-year plans for the systematic and comprehensive production of CDRs which address the Global Climate Observing System's (GCOS) list of Essential Climate Variables, and Climate Information Records (CIRs), which are time series derived from CDRs and related long-term measurements that provides specific information (e.g., drought area) about complex environmental phenomena in a manner useful to a variety of applications and user communities.