Nowcasting Products from Polar Orbits
Adam Dybbroe presents Nowcasting SAF products developed for polar satellites. He gives an overview on existing and future products retrieved from MetOp and NPP satellite data.
The EUMETSAT SAF to support Nowcasting (NWCSAF) develops two software packages, one for Geostationary imagery and one for polar satellite imagery. Both packages retrieve Cloud and other parameters relevant for Nowcasting and short range forecasting. The Polar Platform System (PPS) software package retrieves information on clouds and precipitation. The parameters/products derived are, Cloud Mask, Cloud Type, Cloud Top Temperature and Height, Precipitating Clouds, and a number of cloud microphysical parameters (e.g. liquid water path and cloud phase). The first version of PPS was released in 2004, and it was originally developed to run on local direct readout data from NOAA and Metop (AVHRR and AMSU/MHS). But recently it has been extended to run also on NPP/VIIRS data. And PPS is now also capable of running on many different data formats and services. It is currently being introduced on the EARS Network to run on NOAA19 and Metop-A. In this presentation Adam Dybbroe will give an overview of how PPS works, but the main focus will be on the parameters and products that can be derived with PPS, and how they can be used in Nowcasting applications.