Impact of a Degraded Constellation of Environmental Satellites on NOAA Numerical Weather Prediction

We present in this study the results of multiple experiments undertaken in NOAA/NESDIS under the activities of the U.S. JointCenter for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), to assess the impacts of potential scenarios where the global observing system is degraded. These include the (1) the removal of the redundant sensors in the polar orbital constellation, (2) the potential data gap of in the afternoon orbit and (3) the potential tropics-limited coverage of the COSMIC-2 satellites.