Proposed NOAA Enterprise Precipitation Processing System

Following the National Research Council's Study entitled “The role of NOAA in Space-based Precipitation Measurement”, NOAA has been working toward operational use of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission data in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operations. NOAA has been actively participating in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Precipitation Measurement Mission (PMM) science team. In order to gauge and create interest in GPM data for operational purpose, NOAA held three user workshops on GPM. As recommended by the 2nd NOAA User Workshop on GPM, NOAA developed Level-1 Requirements and Concept of Operations documents to support transitioning the NASA GPM Precipitation Processing System to NOAA operations. This transitioning activity evolved into the development of a NOAA Enterprise Precipitation Processing System (EPPS) which could possibly become a part of the larger NOAA Enterprise Ground System. The NASA GPM Precipitation Processing System serves as a center piece of this proposed NOAA EPPS by providing calibration anchor to all NOAA microwave satellite precipitation processing and facilitating the consolidation of microwave satellite precipitation processing. The proposed NOAA EPPS also serves as a frame work to combine precipitation processing from the NOAA Polar Orbiting Satellites and the Geo-stationary satellites; and to combine the resulting satellite precipitation with other precipitation sources in NOAA such as rain gauges and radars thereby providing a NOAA integrated precipitation data set. This consolidation of precipitation processing in NOAA at enterprise level not only improves the quality of precipitation products, but also saves operational cost in the long run. In this presentation we will discuss the workings of the proposed NOAA Enterprise Precipitation Processing System and its implementation plans. We also discuss the connection between this NOAA EPPS and the larger NOAA Enterprise Ground System.