NWS Readiness for GOES-R and SNPP/JPSS

Dr. Louis W. UccelliniNOAA Assistant Administrator for Weather Services and

Director, National Weather Service

NOAA Satellite ConferenceCollege Park, MD

April 8, 2013

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Building community resilience in the face of increasing vulnerability to extreme weather

• Mission: – Provide weather, water, and climate data, forecasts and warnings

for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy

• Vision…a Weather Ready Nation: – Society is prepared for and responds to weather dependent events

• Success:– depends on ability to forecast and warn extreme events with enough

lead time for people to plan, react, and take steps to mitigate

Building a Weather Ready Nation

Our Vulnerability to High-Impact Weather Has Increased

Why a Weather Ready Nation?...

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In 2012…

Pre-Decisional**Making the extraordinary ordinary 4

14 Billion-Dollar Disasters

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• Global Observing System• Computers (supercomputers,

work stations)• Data Assimilation &

Modeling/Science• Trained workforce

Key components of a successful forecast

Today: Everything you read, see or hear about weather, climate and ocean forecasts

begins with numerical prediction models

Global Observing System• ~2 Billion / day• 99.9 % remotely sensed, mostly from

satellites• 35 different satellites now used

5Satellite contribution dominated by LEO

Key components of a successful Warning

• situational awareness• rapid data access• increasingly remotely

sensed observations• decision support services

/training

Services/products

6Satellite contribution dominated by GEO

LEO vs GEO use is blurring

Pre-Decisional** 7

LEO used mostly for models

GEO used mostly for forecaster situational awareness (SA)

LEO and GEO now being used in models and by forecasters for SA

Observation Impact to NWP

Pre-Decisional**Making the extraordinary ordinary

O3: Ozone from satellites METEOSAT IR Rad (T,H)

MTSATIMG: Japanese geostationary sat vis and IR imagery GOES IR rad (T,H)

MODIS: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (winds) GMS: Japanese geostationary satellite winds

SSMI: Special Sensor MW Imager (H and sfc winds) AMSRE: MW imager radiances (clouds and precip)

MHS: MW humidity sounder on NOAA POES and METOP (H) MSG: METEOSAT 2nd Generation IR rad (T,H)

HIRS: High-Resol IR Sounder on NOAA POES (T,H) PILOT: Pilot balloons and wind profilers (winds)

Ocean buoys (Sfc P, H and winds) METEOSAT winds

GOES winds AMSU-B: Adv MW Sounder B on NOAA POES

SYNOP: Sfc P over land and oceans,H, and winds over oceans QuikSCAT: sfc winds over oceans

TEMP: Radiosonde T, H, and winds GPSRO: RO bending angles from COSMIC, METOP

AIREP: Aircraft T, H, and winds AIRS: Atmos IR Sounder on Aqua (T,H)

IASI: IR Atmos Interferometer on METOP (T,H) AMSU-A: Adv MW Sounder A on Aqua and NOAA POES (T)

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Note:1) Sounders on Polar Satellites reduce forecast error most2) Results are relevant for other NWP Centers, including NWS/NCEP

Courtesy: Carla Cardinaliand Sean Healy, ECMWF

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Proving Grounds – Testbeds – JCSDAR2O-O2R

Mass loading

Effective particle radius

False color for reference

Ash height

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• Full Integration of LEO & GEO– Operational & Research– Traditional (e.g. IR-MW) & Emerging (e.g. GPSRO)– Remotely Sensed & In-Situ

• Latency– 2.5 hour data assimilation (DA) window, data loses

value quickly when used in later DA cycles– Minutes latency relevant to severe weather warnings

Key Challenges

NOAA Enterprise Shared Services ModelDissemination

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• Satellite data remains critically important to the forecast and warning mission of NWS

• Data access / latency needs are driving integrated dissemination plans

• Testbeds / Proving Grounds focused on use of GEO and LEO will have to come to grips with blurring categories of satellite data

In Summary

Questions?

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Backups

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Observation Impact to NWP

Pre-Decisional**Making the extraordinary ordinary

Courtesy: Ron GelaroNASA / GMAO

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