Incorporation of Near-real-time Suomi NPP Land Surface Products into the NCEP Land Modeling Framework

There is a suite of NOAA operational land data products from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite that provide useful information for incorporation into the land modeling framework at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). As part of a recently launched joint effort, NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) and the Land and Hydrology Team at NCEP collaborate on the accelerated use of two operational land surface data products derived from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The operational SNPP VIIRS Green Vegetation Fraction product provides global daily composites over a global 4km and North American regional 1km grids, based on the preceding week's observations. This product is ready for ingest and the efforts focus on a comprehensive evaluation of the impact on the performance of NCEP's land surface models and eventually the coupled models. The SNPP VIIRS Land Surface Temperature Environmental Data Record (EDR) is currently a granule-based real-time product. Work includes the creation of gridded composite maps that are suitable for integration and model performance evaluation against the LST product. The product generation and testing approach will also ensure the consistency between the two land data products included in this study, with a broader future perspective of a comprehensive suite of consistent satellite-based land products. This work supports the development of NOAA's New Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS), the Land Data Assimilation topical area of the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) and the NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Land Data Assimilation Initiative.