FORMOSAT-3 AMS Breakfast Meeting FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Mission 15 January 2007 Welcome to a new era of Earth observations! FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC launch picture provided by Orbital Sciences Corporation 14 April 2006 Vandenberg AFB

FORMOSAT-3 Global Coverage Daily Soundings by early all weather! Red - Daily average Radiosondes Green - Daily FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Soundings

FORMOSAT-3 Data user registration website: htm or via * Select the 'Sign Up ' link under COSMIC Accept data use agreement * Enter information: Name, Address, , user_id, Password, planned use of data An will be sent within 2-3 business days to indicate access has been granted. Free and Open Data Access ~400 users have already registered Free access to data

FORMOSAT-3 Early Results-Weather Global coverage in all weather-sees through clouds! Accurate vertical profiles of water vapor Observing the atmospheric boundary layer Improvement of weather forecast models –Hurricanes and Typhoons –Antarctica –Improved accuracy of global weather models

FORMOSAT-3 Vertical moisture profiles Vertical profiles of water vapor pressure from two COSMIC satellites on 8 July 2006 are shown (in gray and red). The location is 21S, 71W. The corresponding moisture profile from National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP-NOAA) analysis is shown in green dots-line.

FORMOSAT-3 First atmospheric boundary layer measurements from space. Sharp boundary (ABL top) at ~ 2 km altitude

FORMOSAT-3 Importance of ABL Height The ABL height is the depth to which turbulent mixing couples the atmosphere to processes at the Earth's surface on a time scale of a few hours or less. Thus it includes, for example, the fair-weather cumulus layer. The Boundary Layer: Couples surface-based heat, water vapor, momentum, and trace constituent fluxes with the overlying atmosphere Determines the type and coverage of low-level clouds Determines air temperature and humidity close to the Earth's surface Plays a major role in severe weather

FORMOSAT-3 Tropical Storm Bilis (2006) Taiwan Central Weather Bureau Forecasts Tropical Storm Bilis Max wind: 60 kts, Min pressure: 970 mb Fatalities: 630 Damages: $2.5 Billion USD Area affected: Philippines, Taiwan, and China

FORMOSAT-3 12Z 25 August: GPS analysis has a depression; CTRL & NCEP only have troughs SLP and winds 18 hour after Ernesto genesis Analysis of GPS2kmNCEP Analysis Analysis with sat winds + GPS (GPS)Analysis with sat winds (CTRL)

FORMOSAT-3 Low-level moisture change by assimilating GPS GPS all GPS 1 Assimilate this sounding only Fig. 8a

FORMOSAT Z (102h forecast) Sat. IR No GPS GPS allGPS 1 Fig. 8b

FORMOSAT-3 Southern Hemisphere Forecast Improvements Sean Healey, ECMWF

FORMOSAT-3 JCSDA/NCEP COSMIC Data Assimilation A JCSDA development program for the assimilation of GPS radio occultation (RO) data into the next generation of NCEP’s data assimilation system (GSI/GFS) has been underway for the last three years. Data from the CHAMP mission (not available at NCEP in real time) have been used to prepare for COSMIC and other future RO missions. The JCSDA has developed, tested and incorporated into the assimilation system the necessary components to assimilate two different type of GPS RO observations (refractivity and bending angle). These components include: –complex forward models to simulate the observations (refractivity and bending angles) from analysis variables and associated tangent linear and adjoint models –Quality control algorithms –Error characterization models –Data handling and decoding procedures –Verification and impact evaluation procedures Lidia Cucurull, JCSDA/UCAR

FORMOSAT-3 Anomaly correlation as a function of forecast day for two different experiments: - E (assimilation of operational obs), - BND (E + COSMIC bending angle). Only COSMIC observations available in operations have been used in BND. Only COSMIC observations < 30 km These results might have been impacted by the development stage of the GSI system Early impact experiments (T382) with COSMIC Lidia Cucurull, JCSDA/UCAR

FORMOSAT-3 Conclusions and future work (I) The data assimilation experiments using CHAMP data produce encouraging impact results. Better results with COSMIC are anticipated because of the larger number of observations. Impact studies with COSMIC are being performed in preparation for operational implementation. Experiments measuring the benefits of the assimilation of COSMIC profiles of bending angle and refractivity are underway. The GSI/GFS is now being tested in the new computer (we are currently in the middle of a computer upgrade, which includes the Primary and Backup operational systems as well as the development systems). Lidia Cucurull, JCSDA/UCAR

FORMOSAT-3 Conclusions and future work (II) Finalize parallel runs with COSMIC data to select the optimal Forward Operator (refractivity or bending angle) for operations. Keep providing feed back to UCAR/CDAAC on the quality of the GPS RO profiles. Finalize the experiments with CHAMP data in order to understand the differences between the assimilation of refractivity and bending angle (QC, superobs, representativeness error, model resolution, correlated errors…). Transition to operations (expected early 2007) Improve stratospheric assimilation of GPS RO observations. Evaluate more sophisticated forward operators (2D). Lidia Cucurull, JCSDA/UCAR

FORMOSAT-3 December 2006 data latency -profile arrival at UKMO (FM1 70% < 3h)

FORMOSAT-3 Northern Hemisphere Forecast Improvements Sean Healey, ECMWF

FORMOSAT-3 Tropics Forecast Improvements Sean Healey, ECMWF

FORMOSAT-3 Diagnosis of errors in regional model forecasts over Antarctica Low-level error statistics show influence of sea-ice representation Blue = sea ice; Green = open water

FORMOSAT-3 Data Quality Climate Space Weather

FORMOSAT-3 Deviation of pairs of RO soundings separated by less than 10 km

FORMOSAT-3 Precision of GPS RO soundings PPUTLS = Precision Parameter of Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere, which is the mean absolute differences in the km layer 0.02% difference in refractivity, which is equivalent of 0.05 C in temperature Fig. 5b

FORMOSAT-3 Temperature profile comparison between two COSMIC Satellites (FM3, FM4 soundings within 10 km) shows no significant bias Mean RMS Count

FORMOSAT-3 One Month (Sep. 06) COSMIC-CHAMP Comparison: 76 pairs, within 2 degree & 90 min Fig. 12b

FORMOSAT-3 Radio Occultation Temperature Record Data from three Missions

FORMOSAT-3 abc Can we use GPS RO data to calibrate other instrument ? N15, N16 and N18 AMSU calibration against COSMIC

FORMOSAT-3 First collocated ionospheric profiles

FORMOSAT-3 Count of Ionospheric Profiles

FORMOSAT-3 Quiet Storm COSMIC #2 GAIM Comparisons during quiet and disturbed Conditions From presentation by Ludger Scherliess, Utah State University Fig. 13a

FORMOSAT-3 Comparison of NmF2 and HmF2 between COSMIC and GAIM during Apr , 2006 Good agreement of NmF2 between COSMIC and GAIM; Higher peak heights from GAIM than those from COSMIC From presentation by Zhen Zeng, NCAR/HAO Fig. 13b

FORMOSAT-3 RED = COSMIC sat BLUE = GPS sat Formosat-3/COSMIC Observations of Scintillations From presentation by Chin S. Lin, AFRL Fig. 16

FORMOSAT-3 TIP nm passes 14 Sep 2006 FM1 FM3 FM UT (2100 LT) From presentation by Clayton Coker, NRL Fig. 17

FORMOSAT-3 Summary FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC a successful Taiwan-U.S. project FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC launched nearly on time and within budget (~$100M mission) Cost-effective way of obtaining global atmospheric soundings in all weather High accuracy, precision and vertical resolution demonstrated Already positive impact on weather models + hurricane forecasting Observations of tropical boundary layer from space for first time Only observing system to provide information on ionosphere, stratosphere and troposphere Expected to have major impact on climate monitoring-world’s most accurate, precise and stable thermometer! Free and open exchange of data— ~400 users already