Evaluation of NOAA Commercial Radio Occultation Soundings in Global Weather Forecasting

Details

• Journal Title:
  Weather and Forecasting
• Personal Author:
  Cucurull, Lidia ; Li, Xuanli ; Riedel, Christopher ; Kleist, Daryl ; Thomas, Catherine ; Liu, Haixia ; Weir, Patricia
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; NWS (National Weather Service) ; EMC (Environmental Modelling Center) ; NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) ; NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) ; OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; NWS (National Weather Service)
• Description:
  NOAA began operational assimilation of radio occultation (RO) observations from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC-1) mission over 15 years ago. Since then, other operational and research missions have been incorporated into the operational suite. To increase the volume of RO profiles and their geographical coverage beyond what COSMIC-2 provides, which is mostly limited to the tropical and subtropical regions, NOAA engaged in procurement activities with commercial companies capable of delivering RO data for operational use. Tests were conducted in this study to quantify the value of commercial RO data for numerical weather prediction (NWP) applications and their relative value compared to a U.S. Government RO data source (viz., COSMIC-2). When commercial RO soundings are added to a baseline that already assimilates COSMIC-2 bending angle observations, it is found that commercial RO soundings bring benefits to global weather forecast skill, mostly by reducing the temperature and wind root-mean-squared error globally. As expected, the benefits are larger in the extratropics. Statistics between COSMIC-2 and commercial RO data show similar values, indicating that higher signal-to-noise values are not necessary to improve weather forecasting-at least with current modeling capabilities. The quality of commercial RO is sufficient for current global NWP applications. Finally, and supporting earlier studies with simulated data, results show that global RO data distribution is needed to improve NWP skill globally. Significance Statement The results of this paper are significant because they inform on the value of radio occultation observations from different sources for global numerical weather prediction applications, thus helping decision-makers plan for future commercial data buys.
• Source:
  Weather and Forecasting, 40(12), 2649-2667
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/waf-d-24-0221.1
• ISSN:
  0882-8156 ; 1520-0434
• Format:
  pdf
• Publisher:
  American Meteorological Society
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA21OAR4310473
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Library
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/75419/noaa_75419_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 50.83 MB]
• Collection(s):
  Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) ; National Weather Service (NWS) ; National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service (NESDIS)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0dfa0b6458f7355a3127e80e1722593ad0391f087a3ad318b57d8b0cbd7cdd2725b90f0fe0f253a52abbf52b680ac097ea44631fa6ba6a05819f2676ba4a670f