92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 11:15 AM
Transitioning Satellite Soil Moisture Remote Sensing Science and Data Products From NASA SMAP and ESA SMOS to NOAA Weather, Climate and Hydrological Forecast Operations
La Nouvelle A (New Orleans Convention Center )
Xiwu Zhan, NOAA/NESDIS, Camp Springs, MD; and M. Ek, B. Cosgrove, J. Simko, T. Lakhankar, and J. Pereira

As the 1st Tier satellite mission in the National Research Council's Decadal Survey for Earth Science, NASA Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission will provide global soil moisture and freeze/thaw state observations at up to 10km spatial resolution using both L-band microwave radiometer and radar. The L-band microwave radiometer observational data of global soil moisture at 40km resolution from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite of European Space Agency have been available since January 2010. These soil global soil moisture data products are expected to improve numerical weather, climate and hydrological forecasts in at least certain regions. To take advantages of these satellite missions, NOAA is currently organizing resources to transition soil moisture and freeze/thaw sciences and data products to NOAA weather, seasonal climate, and hydrological forecasts operations. Specifically, the following actions are going on for this transition effort. 1) NOAA NCEP has been developing the NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) to streamline the interaction of analysis, forecast, and post-processing systems within NCEP. The Global Forecast System is placed within NEMS. SMAP observational data products will be applied in NEMS through assimilating them in Noah land surface model which is the land surface components of NEMS; 2) SMAP observations will be assimilated into research hydrologic forecast models (such as the SACSMA in the HL-RDHM system) by NOAA-CREST. These model output will provide needed information and data support to NOAA River Forecast Centers (RFCs) that are key partners in the provision of water resource information to the communities and decision makers; 3) Near real time SMAP soil moisture data will also be used in operational flash flood analysis by NESDIS Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB). This paper will present the NOAA SMAP transition plan, the status of current efforts using SMOS data within NCEP, OHD and NESDIS, and expected results from this effort.

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