The NPP Atmosphere Product Evaluation and Test Element (PEATE)

The NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) mission scheduled to launch in 2009 will provide a first look at a new generation of products from US operational polar orbiting Earth observing satellites. Production of Sensor Data Record (SDR) and Environmental Data Record (EDR) products will be accomplished by the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS) of the NPOESS Ground System. The NASA NPP Science Team has been tasked with evaluation of the operational products from the IDPS within a facility known as the Science Data Segment (SDS). Within the SDS, NASA has established four Product and Evaluation and Test Elements (PEATEs) to enable the NPP Science Team to efficiently and effectively evaluate the operational SDRs and EDRs from NPP. The PEATEs are organized into categories including Atmosphere, Land, Ocean and Ozone. The Atmosphere PEATE has been established within the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) and the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Atmosphere PEATE will enable the NPP Science Team to (a) assess the impact of on-orbit instrument performance on SDRs and subsequently on Atmosphere EDRs; (b) evaluate the quality of Atmosphere EDRs at sensor resolution over a wide range of spatial and temporal conditions; (c) validate Atmosphere EDRs against ground-based and satellite-based measurements; (d) develop improved Atmosphere EDR algorithms; and (e) evaluate the climate quality of the Atmosphere EDRs. Computing resources will be provided by a cluster of UNIX servers running a ported version of the NASA Ocean Color Science Data Processing System (SDPS). The system will be designed to allow SDR and EDR product generation at more than 100 times real-time processing speed, enabling one month of data to be processed in one day. This will allow the NPP Science Team to rapidly assess the impact of calibration and science algorithm changes on climatologically significant subsets of the NPP data record.