Impact Assessment of Geostationary Microwave Sounders on NOAA Global NWP System Through Global Observational System Simulation Experiment (OSSE)

The microwave sounders on geostationary orbit will have the capability to study rapidly evolving high-impact weather that is not adequately observed with current satellite systems. The microwave sounders data for five geostationary satellites with the center longitudes of 0°, 60°, 140°, 225°, and 285° were simulated from the GEOS-5 Nature Run (G5NR).   These observations were then assimilated into the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) 3D Hybrid Ensemble-Var. The geostationary microwave (geo-mw) observations were assimilated on top of a control experiment (all operational observations) and a data-gap scenario with no early-afternoon orbiting satellites (2Polar). An overview of the simulation, validation, and assimilation of the geo-mw data and their impacts on GDAS and global weather forecast (GFS) will be presented.