The scientific community requires satellite measurements of the atmosphere's thermodynamic state as well as its chemical composition to address key weather and climate issues affecting society…

This federal contract was awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center to Science & Technology Corporation (STC), a minority-owned small business. The $893,446 grant funds the finalization and demonstration of the Community Long-term Infrared Microwave Coupled Atmospheric Product System (CLIMCAPS) algorithm, which was previously selected for development under the Suomi-NPP program element. CLIMCAPS maintains continuity and consistency in satellite sounding products from the Earth Observing System (EOS)/Aqua and Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) platforms by characterizing and accounting for systematic differences in orbit and instrumentation. The algorithm retrieves atmospheric temperature, moisture, and trace gas profiles to support weather, climate, and air quality research. This work aligns with NASA's strategic goal of creating a continuous record of satellite sounding products.

The scientific community requires satellite measurements of the atmosphere's thermodynamic state as well as its chemical composition to address key weather and climate issues affecting society today. The microwave and hyper-spectral infrared sounders aboard EOS/ aqua and suomi NPP provide a direct and diagnostic measure of the atmospheric state with daily global spatial coverage. One of the main challenges in building a continuous record of sounder products from EOS and suomi NPP is the difference in orbits and instrumentation (e.g., grating versus interferometer); both affecting temporal, spatial, and spectral sampling. Left untreated and uncharacterized, systematic differences such as these can lead to errors that disrupts data continuity leading to mistrust in the value of satellite observations. Quantification and characterization of all sources of uncertainty is critical for long-term science quality datasets that promotes an accurate and reliable understanding of weather or climate processes. We propose to finalize the community long-term infrared microwave coupled atmospheric product system (climcaps) algorithm, that was previously selected for development under roses 2013 a.29 suomi-NPP program element. Climcaps has been installed at the NASA sounder sips with a trained staff that understands both the theoretical and coding aspects. Prior to the start of this proposed work, we will have fully characterized climcaps relative to reanalysis products and other algorithms. Climcaps is fully configurable to run on measurements from the EOS/aqua (airs/amsu) and suomi NPP or jpss (cris/atms) platforms. Climcaps maintains product continuity and consistency through reference to a common framework of laboratory spectroscopy and geophysical states (known as the a-priori), using an optimal estimation inversion approach. For temperature and moisture profiles climcaps uses the NASA merra-2 RE-analysis as an a-priori while trace gas products use a static climatology. We will demonstrate the performance of climcaps in the context of inter-annual variability, extreme events and large-scale processes such as the enso cycle and arctic warming using a carefully selected sub-set of months. In addition to the standard sounding products, this algorithm retrieves many trace gas species (e.g., ozone, carbon monoxide, methane, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitric acid, and nitrous oxide). Trace gas retrievals not only provide long-term stability in the thermodynamic sounding products but also offers the opportunity to address science questions related to air quality and, potentially, greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed work will enhance the utility of climcaps products by providing diagnostic metrics that quantify error propagation and characterize retrieval quality to community-accepted reference standards (e.g., retrieval error covariance and averaging kernel information). These metrics will enable scientists to readily understand climcaps products in order to use them correctly. A vital component of climcaps product refinement will be the active dialog between the developers and users to reach community consensus on quality and application, thus ensuring community acceptance. The primary focus of this proposal is to complete and demonstrate the climcaps approach in achieving NASA􀁉s strategic goal of creating a continuous record of satellite sounding products from the EOS/aqua and suomi NPP platforms.