PSL Activities in Response to NRC Report


July 10, 2007

In response to recommendations made in the recently published National Research Council (NRC) report on "NOAA's Role in Space-Based Global Precipitation," Timothy Schneider of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) participated in a high level NOAA – NASA meeting at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on July 2, 2007. The purpose of this meeting was to initiate a collaboration between the NOAA Hydrometeorological Testbed (HMT) program and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. Joining Mr. Schneider from NOAA, was Ralph Ferraro, National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) as well as Pedro Restrepo and David Kitzmiller from the National Weather Service, Office of Hydrologic Development (OHD). An outcome of this meeting is a NOAA-hosted workshop on HMT and GPM to be held in the Fall of 2007, in Silver Spring, MD. In a closely related effort, Christopher Williams of PSL was awarded one of the four NOAA proposals accepted for funding by NASA's Precipitation Measurement Missions (PMM) – the parent program of GPM. His project will retrieve and analyze raindrop size distributions (DSDs) from several years of profiler observations in Australia and California (using HMT data). The result will be tens-of-thousands of case studies in Tropical and mid-latitude rain regimes that will lead to parameterizations needed to reduce the errors in current and future precipitation satellite algorithms.

Background:
The NRC report focuses on advancing rainfall measuring capabilities, and improving climate modeling and forecasting through the upcoming joint NOAA – NASA GPM satellite program. GPM is the next generation satellite program replacing the current Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). HMT will collaborate with GPM by performing ground validation through its established, high density observational networks and focused modeling studies.

Significance:
By comparing HMT gap-filling radar data with GPM satellite data, forecasting models can be improved to provide more accurate and detailed information to forecast users. These activities support NOAA's mission goal of serving society's needs for weather and water information.

Contact: Timothy Schneider