One of the recommendations of the National Research Council's study (2007) on “NOAA's Role in Space-Based Global Precipitation Estimation and Application” is that “NOAA should formalize its Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) planning by developing a comprehensive, coordinated, agency-wide strategic plan for activities in all three phases of the GPM Mission.” As such, NOAA and NASA are actively engaged on several aspects of the GPM Mission, including NOAA's participation on several GPM working groups and panels, including instrument specifications and GPM ground segment and validation plans. NOAA held its first user workshop on August 18-19, 2010 on the GPM mission focusing on observing requirements, and is planning a second workshop, focusing on user applications of GPM-era data and products.

In support of GPM planning, NOAA formed a Research to Operations Transition team to develop a plan for transitioning the NASA GPM Precipitation Processing System (PPS) from a research demonstration to a sustained operational capability in NOAA. Once the transition plan is approved, NOAA will work on securing a budget to transition PPS from NASA to NOAA to support 24 hours per day, 7 days per week operations, while NASA maintains a parallel PPS and makes needed enhancements.

This presentation will describe NOAA observing requirements and observational gaps, and how GPM can fill these observational gaps. Also, it will describe how NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data used in NOAA operations, and the need to transition GPM PPS to NOAA operations to generate 24x7 near real-time operational products.