NRL Satellite Support for DYNAMO Field Program
Abstract
The long-term goal is to provide the ONR-sponsored DYNAMO field program with a robust suite of satellite meteorology products capable of tracking mesoscale convective clusters associated with the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) in the Indian Ocean. The objective is to develop a NRL-MRY near real-time web page that enables DYNAMO field program participants to view the evolving organization of convective clusters with a suite of geostationary (GEO) and low earth orbiting (LEO) satellite sensors. GEO visible, infrared (IR), and water vapor (WV) imagery can provide the synoptic and mesoscale views required to monitor the general convective organization and its temporal changes. The Meteosat-7 satellite provides this data set for the DYNAMO project and these products were available every 30 minutes. The web page provided animation or looping capabilities that are needed to view multi-day convection changes and determine if organization is increasing in specific areas that may lead to MJO genesis. However, the inability to view through expansive upper-level clouds is detrimental to tracking clouds that are actually producing rain, thus LEO microwave imagers were used to create rainrate products. In addition, we used the NRL-MRY blended rainrate product that incorporates both GEO and LEO data sets. The more accurate microwave imager data is used to train the GEO IR cloud tops as to what rainrate value should be associated with a given cold cloud top temperature. Thus a dynamic histogram look-up table is created for small geographical domains and the look-up table is updated every time a microwave imager overflies. This blending method is used by NOAA and others for a variety of global and regional rainrate products.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA574475
Entities
People
- Jeffrey D. Hawkins
Organizations
- United States Naval Research Laboratory