The Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (NPP) CalVal Overview

The Suomi NPP (SNPP) satellite was launched successfully on October 28, 2011 and is a pathfinder for the future US Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) operational satellite series. The primary objectives of the SNPP mission provide a continuation of the group of Earth system observations initiated by the Earth Observing System Terra, Aqua, and Aura missions; and prepare the operational forecasting community with pre-operational risk reduction, demonstration, and validation for selected JPSS instruments and ground processing data systems. The SNPP satellite is now flying with the following five instruments: 1) Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) has multi-band imaging capabilities to support the acquisition of high-resolution atmospheric imagery and generation of a variety of applied products including visible and infrared imaging of hurricanes and detection of fires, smoke, and atmospheric aerosols. 2) Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) is the the first in a series of advanced operational sounders that provide more accurate, detailed atmospheric temperature and moisture observations for weather and climate applications. 3) Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) operates in conjunction with the CrIS to profile atmospheric temperature and moisture. Higher (spatial, temporal and spectral) resolution and more accurate sounding data from CrIS and ATMS support continuing advances in data assimilation systems and NWP models to improve short- to medium-range weather forecasts. 4) Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) measures the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere, providing information on how ozone concentration varies with altitude. Data from OMPS continue three decades of climate measurements of this important parameter used in global climate models. The OMPS measurements also fulfill the U.S. treaty obligation to monitor global ozone concentrations with no gaps in coverage. Cloud and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES) seeks to develop and improve weather forecast and climate models prediction, to provide measurements of the space and time distribution of the Earth's Radiation Budget components. The observations from CERES are essential to understanding the effect of clouds on the energy balance (energy coming in from the sun and radiating out from the earth), which is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in our modeling of the climate. The SNPP instruments are now undergoing a period of intensive calval and the instrument on-orbit performances are stable and the post-launch results all meet or exceed the specifications. The SNPP SDR products have reached the provisional level at which users can order the data from NOAA archival and perform in-depth scientific research. Also, ATMS data has been operationally assimilated into global and regional forecast models and a suite of EDR products are generated from the NPP ground system and NOAA processing system. During the intensive calval, the SDR teams have developed many innovative techniques for characterizing the instrument performance and improving the bias corrections. Numerous SDR processing bugs are fixed and the data quality flags are monitored correctly in the data streams. The critical SNPP calval tasks have been completed and the most recent calval results will be reported in this presentation.