NAST-I Airborne Product Inter-comparisons in Support of SNPP Validation

The Suomi NPP (SNPP) satellite began a critical first step in building the next-generation Earth observing satellite system for the US, continuing key environmental data records that are essential for weather forecasting and climate change science. Since its launch in late 2011, NASA and NOAA have jointly conducted two airborne field campaigns with a primary focus on SNPP instrument and data product calibration / validation:  1) mid-latitude flights based out of Palmdale, CA during May 2013 (SNPP-1), and 2) flights over Greenland during March 2015 while based out of Keflavik, Iceland (SNPP-2).  In addition to under-flying the SNPP satellite, aircraft flight profiles were defined to also obtain coincident observations with the NASA A-train (i.e. AQUA) and EUMETSAT MetOP-A / MetOP-B satellites (i.e. overlapping with the AIRS, IASI, and CrIS infrared advanced sounder instruments), along with radiosonde and ground truth sites.  The NASA LaRC National Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer (NAST-I) was one of the key payload sensors aboard the ER-2 aircraft during these campaigns.  This presentation gives an overview of the SNPP field campaigns and shows select inter-comparisons of NAST-I data products with those from other measurement assets.