Background
RAL scientists and engineers are working on a number of projects that involve the acquisition and application of meteorological satellite data to enhance our understanding of atmospheric processes and applications. Much of this work is being supported by NASA, through the Advanced Satellite Aviation Weather Products (ASAP) initiative. The goal of this effort is to enhance the transition of new and existing satellite information ands products into the FAA’s Aviation Weather Research Program (AWRP) by collaborating with the FAA’s Product Development Teams, many of which are based at NCAR.
The ASAP project is specifically addressing hazards such as convective weather, turbulence (clear-air and cloud-induced), in-flight icing, volcanic ash, as well as the monitoring of weather in the data-sparse areas over oceans. The ASAP initiative is sponsored by the NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) and the NASA Applied Sciences Program’s Aviation Applications Project. Current participants in the ASAP program include researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC), the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin (UW-CIMSS) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory (MIT-LL).
Cloud properties, in this case cloud liquid water path, derived from multispectral GOES satellite observations over Ohio. The left hand panel shows the basic, pixel-by-pixel satellite product after being remapped to a 5-km resolution grid that is compatible with the NCEP Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) numerical weather forecasting model. The right hand panel shows the same data after being reprocessed at RAL to reduce noise and emphasize the larger-scale meteorological features.(click on image to enlarge).
RAL’s role is to coordinate the contributions from the participating universities and laboratories with the needs and requirements of the FAA’s aviation weather Product Development Teams and to evaluate the accuracy and usefulness of these advanced satellite products. At present, the new products that are the closest to operational application contribute to the monitoring of the early states of convective activity before clouds develop radar echoes and provide new observations of the physical properties of clouds that may be able to enhance the next generation of in-flight icing products.
The figure shows one of the current RAL efforts to enhance satellite products for applied applications. In this figure, the left-hand panel shows an estimate of the cloud liquid water path based on multispectral observations form the GOES satellite. While the observations show considerable promise in identifying areas of high supercooled liquid water content, the observations emphasize very small scale features with a low signal to noise ratio. The right hand panel shows the identical data set, follow the application of a RAL spatial filtering algorithm that reduces the noise and emphasizes features in the 10 to 15 kilometer size range.