2011 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Guidance to the AWG

2011 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) Guidance to the AWG June 16, 2011 Technical Advisory Committee Members Mike Johnson Kevin Schrab John LeMarshallTom Schott(absent) Paul MenzelJames Yoe(absent) Don GrayMark De Maria (EO)

Introduction 3 Comment Successful delivery of Baseline Products to the GOES-R Office has been a result of outstanding scientific, technical and managerial work. All involved deserve the highest commendation. Much high quality work related to the generation of Option 2 Products has been presented at 2011 GOES-R Algorithm Working Group Review. The Low Cloud and Fog and SO2 Detection products for example are needed for aviation safety and the Convective initiation product is of clear assistance in severe weather prediction. It is important the benefits to be accrued from the Option 2 Products are not lost to the community.

General Findings Transfer of AWG work to Harris Credit must be given to given to those involved in the transfer of work to Harris and the considerable interaction that has followed. However some concerns still remain: emphasis on ATBDs should not be to exclusion of s/w and benchmark data scientist must still recognize code and be able to interact with it after transfer must avoid loss of scientific content lock in 6 years before launch must be avoided (update strategy before Day 1 4 Concerns

General Findings Production of Option 2 Products In the current circumstances there is no funding available to render Option 2 Products operational. Given the benefit of these products in areas such as aviation safety there is a requirement to develop a strategy to produce real-time Option 2 Products. At minimum, option 2 products should be produced in real time at a research and demonstration level of effort and be available for user evaluation and application. 5 Concerns

General Findings Production of Baseline Products At minimum, improvements to Baseline Products should continue at a research and demonstration level of effort to ensure that important rapid developments (such as recent advance in the volcanic ash detection and quantification ) will be available to the user community, and not be lost due to the five-year freeze during the pass to operations. Applications with intermediate products of use to the community should plan to retain the possibly of providing this information as a day 2 product enhancement (eg Fog probability, magnitude of cloud top cooling and Volcanic…) 6 Concerns

General Findings Preparation for day one NWP impact. There has been significant investment in DA to help in achieving day 1 NWP impact. This has been in the areas of computing capability, research and a visiting science program. There still remains however areas requiring attention to ensure day one exploitation of GOES-R data for NWP: engagement of JCSDA in AWG and R3 needs to be more robust the generation and continuous assimilation of cloud free radiances the generation and assimilation hourly winds sfc emissivity needs be updated in the CRTM 7 Concerns

General Findings Particular Items Need more utilization of temporal continuity of geo measurements for product QC, for example Ocean Currents could benefit from time consistency tests. Temporal continuity should be used as a verification methodology Snow depth validation could benefit from CoCoRAHS for validation. Visualization of data and products needs be supported. The visualization tools, such as the RGB decision aids, funded by GOES-R Risk Reduction has excellent potential. The development, validation, and demonstration in the Proving Ground should be continued. Unify and effectively exploit emissivity effort Fused fog product is a good example of a useful Option 2 product that could be available to the data cube ……………………. 8 Concerns

General Findings General Positive response to 2010 TAC comments and suggestions. Activities are on track. TAC sees no show stoppers. Good progress has been made on day one and day two algorithms. Loss of Option 2 Their remains important items still needing attention 9

General Findings The length of the post-launch check-out needs to be at least one year. Current GOES post-launch check-out is six months (with one month dedicated to the science tests), but the new spacecraft, new instruments and new products dictate the necessity for a much longer check-out period. A longer period for checkout and phased operations, similar to the European commissioning, is recommended. 10 TAC Recommendations

General Findings Due to the greatly improved capabilities of the GOES-R system (total lightning, volcanic ash, aircraft icing, fog, turbulence, etc) and large investment, the GOES-R should be put into operational service as soon as possible. This best would allow the Nation reap the benefits of GOES-R. 11 TAC Recommendations

General Findings Field campaigns for validation of GOES-R sensor measurements and derived products must be planned as soon as possible. The detailed Basis of Estimate should take into account other planned validation campaigns and assets as much as possible. Coordination with other programs requires early commitment. 12 TAC Recommendations

General Findings GPO should take action so that ITAR restrictions on the final characterization of GOES-R ABI as it becomes available (so for example the proxy team and the algorithm teams are all using the same, best set of total system srf data and it can be tracked) are alleviated as soon as possible, given that GOES-R will be an important contribution to the Global Observing System. 13 TAC Recommendations

General Findings It is important the benefits to be accrued from the Option 2 Products are not lost to the community. As a result there is a requirement to develop a strategy to produce real-time Option 2 Products. At minimum, Option 2 products should continue at a research (including validation) and demonstration level of effort and be available for real time user evaluation and use. 14 TAC Recommendations

General Findings In order to ensure that important rapid developments (such as recent advance in the volcanic ash detection and quantification) will be available to the user community, and not be lost due to the five-year freeze in the current move to operations, at a minimum, improvements to Baseline Products should continue at a research and demonstration level of effort and be available for real time user evaluation and use.. 15 TAC Recommendations

General Findings The process for introducing new operational products (proven in the GOES-R risk reduction program) must be streamlined and tested. There will be many new and enhanced products introduced by GOES-R. In addition, care should be taken to retain intermediate products. While operational products sometimes are displayed in simplified form for efficiency (e.g. in binary yes/no fashion), information content of the intermediate and final products should be retained for subsequent product enhancements (e.g. ice thickness, probability of fog, SO2 amounts, CI etc). 16 TAC Recommendations

General Findings NWP engagement, particularly through the JCSDA, in early testing of improved ABI/GLM products must be strengthened. The product characteristics must be made suitable for assimilation and the assimilation methodologies used in JCSDA must be optimised for data usage. Suggested products to be examined include cloud free radiances for assimilation, hourly winds, surface emissivity, … 17 TAC Recommendations

General Findings In terms of climate work and absolute calibration of GOES radiances for NWP and reanalysis application, it is important that routine cross calibration of the GOES ABI with Leo observations is undertaken on a regular basis. This can be performed as part of the GSICS program. 18 TAC Recommendations

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