1. Report to 8th GSICS Exec Panel
Tim Hewison
On behalf of GRWG + EUMETSAT

2. Contents Report from GRWG Report on Microwave Meetings
2nd GSICS Users’ Workshop
Operations Plan?
Product Definitions
Product Acceptance/Endorsement
What level of changes need approval by Exec?
Highlights of GPRCs

3. NOAA Workshop on Climate Data Record from Satellite Microwave Radiometer
NESDIS/STAR hosted a Workshop on Climate Data Record (CDR) from Satellite Microwave Radiometer at NOAA Science Center, Silver Spring, Maryland from March 22-24, 2010. 
The workshop covered topics on instrument calibration and CDR development from long-term satellite microwave observations onboard NOAA, NASA, NAVY, and EUMESAT operational polar-orbiting satellite series. 
The instruments providing observations for microwave CDR development include Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU), Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSMI), and Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS). 
Workshop allowed NOAA CDR development teams to respond to and get input from users and other CDR developers on key concepts and concerns to ensure NOAA CDRs are both highly useful and up-to-date. 
Workshop also provides a mechanism for running NOAA transparency program to gain community acceptance and credibility by formally and openly describing the NOAA CDR approaches. 
More than 50 scientists and program mangers attended the workshop, representing more than 20 national/international weather operational canters, research and academic institutes. 
Workshop presentations reviewed the current status of a few major national/international programs such as the National Climate Service, the NOAA CDR Program, and the WMO Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (GSICS) Program. 
Presentations from different institutes reviewed their respective progresses on calibration technique development, CDR accuracy evaluation, CDR format requirement, and many other issues involved in the CDR development.  Issues and recommendations toward developing community consensus CDR products were extensively discussed at the workshop.

4. NESDIS/STAR has recently released Version 2
NESDIS/STAR has recently released Version 2.0 of the SNO calibrated, climate-quality 30-year MSU/AMSU atmospheric temperature thematic CDR
includes Temperature Mid-Troposphere (TMT), Temperature Tropopause and Stratosphere (TTS), and Temperature Lower-Stratosphere (TLS).  
NOAA TLS product has been, for the first time, independently validated by NCAR using Global Positioning System (GPS) Radio Occultation (RO) calibrated MSU/AMSU products:
For a 7.5-year global point-by-point inter-comparison on a 100 latitude by 100 longitude grid resolution, the NOAA TLS product reaches a precision (standard deviation) as high as 0.5 K. 
This is 3 to 4 times better than existing similar products developed by other research groups. 
This is an extremely encouraging result that demonstrates advantages of the MSU/AMSU recalibration effort at NOAA/NESDIS using SNO methodology.  This result is expected to have good impact on the climate research in the climate community. 
SSM/SSMIS CDR development team presents the CDR development plan including:
1) checking the SSM/I Earth Incident Angle (EIA) uncertainty,
2) correction of RFI in the data sets, 
3) correction of SSMIS antenna emission anomaly, 
4) documentation process of SSM/I and SSMIS level 1b base file for the community, and
5) SSMIS imaging channel calval for GPCP and climate user community, etc.

5. GSICS Bias Monitoring Product
 Webpage plots of time series of the various instruments are themselves GSICS Products
albeit based on the same data used to generate the GSICS Correction
However, they serve a different purpose and may attract different users. They provide valuable information for monitoring the instruments’ calibration. As such, I propose naming these products “GSICS Monitoring”.

6. GSICS Corrections
JMA and EUMETSAT produce different GSICS Corrections.
At EUMETSAT we can process the SEVIRI and IASI data in near real-time, so the smoothing we apply is based on coalescing all the collocations within a period prior to the current day. This could make it useful for near real-time applications.
JMA receive AIRS and IASI data only after a significant delay, so they combine collocations over a period symmetrically distributed before/after nominal observation time. This provides better smoothing with the benefit of foresight, and could be beneficial for re-analysis activities for climate monitoring purposes.
Again, these are 2 different products for different users, which can be derived from the same datasets through a very similar process and reported in the same format. However, it emphasises the need to make a clear distinction between these and include a validity period in the global attributes of the products. As such, I propose naming these products “GSICS Near Real-Time Correction” and “GSICS Re-Analysis Correction”.

7. Proposed GSICS Products
To summarise:
I proposed generating 3 distinct GSICS products for the inter-calibration of each instrument pair:
GSICS Monitoring
GSICS Near Real-Time Correction
GSICS Re-Analysis Correction
This proposal was supported by GRWG
with caveat that these could be covered by a single ATBD and Product Acceptance to minimise paperwork and maximise consistency

8. Product Acceptance/Endorsement
What level of changes need approval by Exec?
Definition of new GSICS Products
Re-structuring of directories on GSICS Data and Product Servers