1. 11 GRAS SAF Status & Next Steps Kent B. Lauritsen Danish Meteorological Institute Copenhagen, Denmark ----- Contents - Short introduction to the GRAS SAF system - Status of refractivity product - Next upgrades of the system - 1dvar products and ROPP_PP processing - ROPP software and plans

2. 22 GRAS Satellite Application Facility Consortium  Leading Entity:Danish Meteorological Institute (Copenhagen, Denmark) Kent B. Lauritsen, Hans Gleisner, Kjartan Kinch, Johannes K. Nielsen, Frans Rubek, Stig Syndergaard, Hallgeir Wilhelmsen  Partners:ECMWF (Reading, UK) Sean Healy Institute d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC, Barcelona, Spain) Estel Cardellach, Santi Oliveras Met Office (Exeter, UK) Dave Offiler, Chris Burrows, Ian Culverwell Occultation Antenna UKMO x DMI x IEEC x EUMETSAT x ECMWF x

3. 33 The GRAS SAF objectives Operational processing and archiving center for GRAS radio occultation (RO) data: - including additional third party RO data being processed by EUMETSAT CAF; - including reprocessing of RO data from EUMETSAT CAF and other data providers; Products and software deliverables: Near-real time (NRT) radio occultation products - operational products in NRT (refractivity, temperature, pressure, humidity); Offline/climate radio occultation products - offline profile products (monthly), and reprocessed profiles; - offline gridded products (monthly), and reprocessed data sets: gridded data of bending angle, refractivity, temperature, humidity, geopotential height; Radio Occultation Processing Package (ROPP) - routines for assimilation and processing of RO data;

4. 44 NRT, Offline, and Climate processing overview Phase, amplitude, ground station observations, near-real time orbits Phase, amplitude, ground station observations, NRT/offline data Bending angle profiles (L1, L2, LC) Refractivity profiles 1D-Var algorithm Ancillary temperature, pressure, and humidity, from ECMWF forecasts Temperature, pressure, and humidity profiles GRAS SAF NRT Products Bending angle profiles (ionosphere corrected and statistically optimized) Refractivity profiles 1D-Var algorithm Temperature, pressure, and humidity profiles GRAS SAF Offline Products Level 1a Level 1b Level 2 Produced by EUMETSAT CAF Geometric optics inversion algorithm Bending angle profiles (statistically optimized) Abel transform algorithm CT2 algorithm Abel transform algorithm Level 2 Re-processed data (zero/single/double diff.): Phase, amplitude Other RO data (COSMIC, CHAMP,...): Phase, amplitude Bending angle profiles (ionosphere corrected and statistically optimized) Refractivity profiles 1D-Var algorithm CT2 algorithm Abel transform algorithm Temperature, pressure, and humidity profiles Climate algorithms Bending angle, refractivity, temperature, humidity, and geopotential height grids GRAS SAF Climate/Gridded Data

5. 55 Recent and planned system upgrades GRIB2 format -upgrading of GPAC to handle ECMWF’s new GRIB-2 format -done on May 17, 2011 L2 extrapolation and BA thinning -upgrade done in coordination with EUMETSAT -updated code running at EUMETSAT CGS GS2 -planned for June/July (TBC) Production, dissemination, and archiving of 1DVar products -code prepared, testing -upgrade planned for TBD

6. 66 NRT refractivity product (GRM-01)  Produced from geometric optics (GO) level 1b bending angles (BAs) from GRAS/Metop-A data from EUMETSAT CAF  Limited information contents at low altitudes (due to GO and no RS data)  Product version: 1.3  Number of registered GTS users: 19

7. 77 REF statistics for the first 10 days of Dec 2010

8. 88 NRT refractivity product (GRM-01): Plans Plans: -L2 extrapolation: will increase penetration depth -Improve statistical optimization (SO) by using an enhanced background climatology -Validate against COSMIC data processed to BA and Refractivity -Comparisons of ROPP_PP vs OCC/Invert -Switch to using ROPP_PP code in operations Status on issues related to PPF upgrade preparations at DMI: - Analyses focusing on the inclusion of thinned bending angles in the PFS files (done in Dec 2010 using PPF2.16 GS2 data) - Analyses focusing on extrapolation of L2 bending angles with higher SLTA configuration (done in Feb 2011 using PPF2.17 offline data)

9. 99 Penetration statistics with L2 extrapolation

10. 10 NRT 1DVar products: T and q Status  Produced from refractivity from (currently) geometric optics (GO) bending angles  Limited information content at low altitudes  Limited information about humidity  Product version: 1.0  Number of GTS users: n/a Plans/ongoing: -Upgrade operational system with NRT 1DVar products: in preparation -Processing and comparison of GRAS and COSMIC data -Re-assess temperature and humidity information in the lower troposphere -Handle cases with super saturation -Scientific assessment of prototype GRAS data for check-point review in Jan 2012

11. 11 ROPP_PP processing of GRAS RS data All processed GRAS RS profiles from 30 Sept 2007 included; Comparison of ROPP_PP and Michael Gorbunov’s OCC codes for different choices of coordinates;

12. 12 ROPP package overview GRAS Level 1b (CGS) EPS /PFS netCDF eps2netcdf GRAS Level 2 (SAF) ropp2bufr (Thin or Full Level 1b/2) BUFR ropp_1dvar (for Q/C) ropp_fm (as part of 3/4-D Var) NWP VAR system NWP User netCDF ropp_pp ropp2bufr (Thin Level 1b) ropp2bufr (Thin Level 2) ropp_1dvar netCDF

13. 13 Next release: ROPP-5 ROPP-5 improvements over ROPP v4.1: Inclusion of non-ideal gas effects (compressibility factors) in ropp_fm and ropp_1dvar; Enhanced BUFR support in ropp_io – interfaces also with ECMWF library; Various bugfixes (including some in ropp_pp/OCC); Beta version built and put on website at end of March 2011. DRI review held at Met Office on 20 May 2011. ROPP-5 scheduled to be released early July 2011 after close-out meeting/telecon later in June.

14. 14 Plan for ROPP-6 ROPP-6 in plan for release before end of CDOP in February 2012 (Public release: Feb 2012; DRI: Dec 2011; Beta: Oct/Nov 2011) New/improved science to include: Ionosphere Correction New technical enhancements: potentially netCDF-4/HDF5 updated format for ECM’s (error covariance matrices) Tuning of ROPP_PP for GRAS offline data

15. 15 ROPP and data registered users

16. 16 Improving the timeliness of Metop-A global data Using NASA's McMurdo station in Antarctica, near the South Pole; Antarctic Data Acquisition (ADA) User trials in e.g. April, 2011: Below is shown data from 19 April from 7:30z to 15:30z; GRAS SAF system can handle higher data rates (but to get the full increase in timeliness, system has to be “reconfigured”) Figure from EUMETSAT Min: 1h 28min Min: 0h 41min

17. 17 fin