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The COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Mission: Overview and Status

The COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Mission: Overview and Status. Y.-H. Kuo, R. Rocken, R. A. Anthes UCAR Nick Yen, J. J. Miau NSPO. COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate). 6 microsatellites launched in April 2006 Three instruments:

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The COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Mission: Overview and Status

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  1. The COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Mission: Overview and Status Y.-H. Kuo, R. Rocken, R. A. Anthes UCAR Nick Yen, J. J. Miau NSPO

  2. COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate) • 6 microsatellites launched in April 2006 • Three instruments: • GPS receiver, TIP, Tri-band beacon • All six spacecraft are operating • Produced GPS RO soundings: • -1.5M neutral atmospheric profiles • 1.7M ionospheric profiles • 1,500 ~ 2,000 soundings per day • 952 registered users from 49 countries • 90% of the soundings delivered within 3h A Joint Taiwan-U.S. Mission FORMOSAT-3 in Taiwan

  3. Operational NWP applications • Global NWP centers began operational assimilation of COSMIC within a year, and have all shown positive impacts. • Results from ECMWF showed that COSMIC can be assimilated without bias correction: • Serve as anchor for variational bias correction system • Improve the use of other satellite microwave and IR sounder data

  4. Climate applications • “GPS-RO observations and derived products have some unique properties and potentials that are very appealing from a climate perspective” – consensus of NOAA ad hoc GPS-RO Workshop group • Error characterization – comprehensive and well-documented (e.g., Kursinski, 1997) • Low structural error – different processing centers produced essentially the same results. • High vertical resolution, global uniform sampling • High precision and accuracy in the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere

  5. Support atmospheric research from boundary to stratosphere • COSMIC data have been shown to be useful for the detection of atmospheric boundary layer, and its spatial and temporal variations. • COSMIC has been shown to be valuable for detecting systematic biases in different types of radiosonde systems. This is useful for both operational analysis and climate reanalysis. • COSMIC is showing extremely sharp tropopause inversion over the polar regions, providing opportunities to study the tropopause dynamics.

  6. Weather and space weather • COSMIC data are being used to evaluate thermosphere (near 300 km) simulations by TIEGCM and other ionospheric models. This is important for space weather forecasting. • COSMIC has been shown to have a significant impact on the analysis and prediction of significant weather systems: • Hurricane genesis • Intensity and track of tropical cyclones • Mesoscale convective systems during Mei-yu season • Moisture transport associated with East Asia monsoon • Atmospheric river events

  7. Distribution of heights of strong inversion layers (BAL > 1E-2 rad) over North America Summer: most sharp inversion layers (pronounced ABL top) over the ocean and plains; less over mountains Winter: - fewer strong inversion layers over continent, more over the ocean southwards - shallower ABL over continent - deeper ABL over the ocean than in Summer From Sergey Sokolovskiy

  8. night day day night Russia Russia COSMIC-Radiosonde COSMIC-Radiosonde From Ben Ho USA USA 27 51 Slide 15

  9. Neutral Winds derived from COSMIC Data Luan, X., and S. C. Solomon, Meridional winds derived from COSMIC radio occultation measurements in winter, J. Geophys. Res., in press, 2008.

  10. Arctic summer tropopause inversion layer (from Bill Randel) Radiosonde at Eureka (80o N) inversion ~ 8 K high stability layer Static stability • Persistent feature, observed in almost all profiles • during summer in both hemispheres (why?) • Important for understanding dynamical (and chemical) • coupling between troposphere and stratosphere

  11. Radiosondes and nearby COSMIC soundings sonde-COSMIC separation sonde COSMIC COSMIC allows ~100 times more observations than radiosondes, to study space-time variability of inversion layer

  12. COSMIC 60o – 90o N Strength of polar tropopause inversion T(ztrop+ 2km) - T(ztrop) Daily data from COSMIC, average over polar cap 7 K Arctic COSMIC 60o – 90o S 7 K Antarctic Summer maximum

  13. From Sean Healy, Dick Dee, ECMWF Bias correction applied to AMSU-A radiances for August 2007 Green = Control Pink = COSMIC Bias correction applied to channels 8,9,10,11 generally smaller with COSMIC assimilated. Larger for channels 12,13.

  14. Fit to radiosonde and COSMIC measurements (SH) Radiosonde temperature CONTROL: red COSMIC: black Bending angle COSMIC-4 (normalised O-B departures)

  15. Introduction of COSMIC measurements into ERA-Interim (Dec 12, 2006)

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