NOAA-20 ATMS Climate-Referenced Precipitation Profiles

Version 07 climate-reference products provide precipitation and hydrometeor profiles using a Bayesian algorithm with ECMWF reanalysis ancillary data for homogeneity. The data are produced by the GPM GPROF algorithm for the ATMS sensor on the NOAA-20 satellite, managed by the GES DISC. These climate products use a 3-month lag in ancillary data to ensure consistency for long-term records.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term precipitation trends by comparing climate-referenced brightness temperature retrievals across the mission timeline.
• Studying the vertical distribution of hydrometeors like rain, snow, and cloud water using retrieved profile data.
• Validating climate and weather models with consistent, homogeneous surface and atmospheric condition fields from ECMWF reanalysis.
• Investigating sensor inter-calibration within the GPM constellation by comparing Bayesian retrieval parameters across different passive microwave sensors.
• Assessing precipitation uncertainty estimates provided for each retrieved mean rain rate profile.

Strengths

• Climate-reference products use homogeneous ECMWF reanalysis ancillary data for consistent long-term time series.
• Algorithm provides a mean rain rate, vertical hydrometeor structure, and associated uncertainty for each retrieval.
• Bayesian method uses a consistent a-priori database of rain profiles, making it parametric and suited for constellation data.

Limitations

• Ancillary data for climate products has a 2-3 month lag behind regular production, limiting near-realtime analysis.
• Specific spatial resolution, temporal coverage, and sample size details are not provided in the description.

Provenance

Source

GES DISC (Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center), NASA.

Collection Method

Retrievals from the ATMS passive microwave sensor on the NOAA-20 satellite using the GPROF Bayesian algorithm.

Time Range

Time series intended for climate analysis; specific start and end dates are not provided.

Freshness

Version 07 is the current version; update frequency is not specified.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite observations; specific spatial granularity is 17 km as indicated in the title.