Aqua and Terra Polar Orbiter Direct Broadcast Data in Support of Operational Environmental Forecasters

NOAA and NASA Polar Orbiter Meteorological Satellites include the capability to transmit data as it is being collected. Owners of X/L band antennas can acquire the data in real-time within their line of sight. In order to support local applications, NOAA and NASA have funded open source software packages that allow users to create calibrated/geolocated data and products from their locally acquired data. The direct broadcast software suite is extensive, including support for Aqua and Terra MODIS, AIRS and AMSU through NASA's International MODIS/AIRS Processing Package, as well as JPSS Suomi-NPP VIIRS, ATMS and CrIS instruments through NOAA's Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP). Users of this software can create a number of Level 2 and Environmental Data Record (EDR) products including sea surface temperatures, hot spot detections, retrievals of atmospheric temperature and moisture, land surface temperatures, vegetation indices, aerosols and cloud properties. In addition, a number of software applications directly supporting environmental forecasters are included such as the Infusing Satellite Data into Environmental Applications – International (IDEA-I) which identifies areas of heavy aerosol loading using the MODIS MOD04 product, and runs a trajectory model which forecasts the 48 hour movement of the aerosols in 3 dimensions. A similar package supports the forecast of stratospheric ozone intrusions using retrievals from hyper-spectral sounders including CrIS, AIRS and IASI. Recently, a new version of the Polar2Grid software was released jointly through CSPP/IMAPP that can quickly and easily create full resolution MODIS, VIIRS and AVHRR reprojections into output AWIPS, GeoTIFF, HDF5, binary and KMZ files. It also supports the creation of 24 bit true and false color output through the use of a simple bash shell scripts. Users can provide their own grids definitions (proj4) or use the default (WGS84 Google Earth projection). This software has been in use since 2012, supplying operational NWS forecasters near real-time MODIS and VIIRS imagery. The free software has been downloaded by more than 2000 users around the world. It has served as the basis for 10+ global direct broadcast workshops, including the 2009 IGARSS South Africa short course, entitled "Direct Broadcast Data for Enhanced Forecasting and Real-Time Environmental Decision-Making" Examples of the utility this high spatial and high spectral resolution data to the global forecasting and environmental decision making community will be presented.