The Polar Orbiting Satellite Sounding Evaluator

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces global temperature and moisture soundings from several polar orbiting environmental satellites (POES). Until recently, this data has not been available to National Weather Service (NWS) field forecast offices. Now, with the creation of the Polar Orbiting Satellite Sounding Evaluator (POSSE), polar sounding data is available to users worldwide via the Internet.

POSSE is a Java applet that can be run from within most web browsers. When accessed, it displays global views of various raw data and sounding products including temperature, water vapor, ozone and precipitable water. An important feature of POSSE is the ability to select an individual sounding and view the retrieved profiles (temperature and water vapor) along with coincident forecast profiles produced by the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). POSSE also provides the ability to view vertical cross-sections of atmospheric temperatures or water vapor.

POSSE is currently providing data from the NOAA-15 Advanced TIROS-N Operational Vertical Sounder (ATOVS) operational system, and from the NOAA-14 Revised TIROS-N Operational Vertical Sounder (RTOVS) system.

This paper provides an overview of the POSSE system including the databases that contain the sounding and coincident forecast data. This paper also discusses how the use of Java provides direct access to POES data using client/server techniques.