CrIS - The Evolution of the Operational Advanced Sounder (Invited Presentation)

The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) flying on the Suomi-NPP, and follow on Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), was adopted by the joint NOAA/NASA/DOD Integrated Program Office (IPO) to fly on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The original instrument, called the Interferometer Thermodynamic Sounder (ITS), was designed at the University of Wisconsin (UW) under funding from the EUMETSAT, as a replacement for the High-resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) instrument flying on the NOAA series of satellites. The ITS spectral radiance measurement approach and technology was based on the UW High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (HIS) that was being flown successfully on the NASA ER-2 aircraft to demonstrate the improvement in vertical sounding resolution using thousands of spectral radiance channels for the atmospheric profile retrieval, as opposed to the nineteen spectra radiance channels of the HIRS, a filter radiometer. This talk will trace the evolution of the hyperspectral sounding program from its inception during the late 1970's to its realization with the operational CrIS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite. The radiance measurement and sounding capabilities of CrIS will be demonstrated through radiance measurement and sounding retrieval results obtained during airborne Calibration and Validation (Cal//Val) programs held during 2013 and 2015. It is shown that the future use of miniaturized CrIS instruments on a fleet of small cube satellites offers the possibility of more frequent global coverage of derived vertical wind profiles and stability tendencies for use in global numerical weather prediction models and severe weather forecast applications.