Assimilating New Passive Microwave Data in the NOAA GDAS

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), in support of the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), has been working to extend the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) scheme to assimilate L1 data from select passive microwave sensors that, up until this point, have not been operationally assimilated in the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS). These sensors, including the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI), the Megha-Tropiques Sondeur Atmosphérique du Profil d'Humidité Intertropicale par Radiométrie (SAPHIR), and the Global Change Observation Mission – Water 1 (GCOM-W1) Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), provide information about the state of the atmosphere over much of the atmospheric column in a timely manner across a large portion of the globe, and thereby possess the potential to improve numerical weather model analyses and forecasts when appropriately assimilated. To be presented are an overview of the quality control and clear-sky assimilation of data from these sensors into the NOAA GDAS, and the impacts that the clear-sky assimilation of these data have on Global Forecast System (GFS) forecasts.