COSMIC Status & Highlights

COSMIC Status• Mission Status

– 1500–2500 profiles per day– ~90% observations available within 3 hr (~2000

soundings/day)– ~2.0M Neutral Atmospheric profiles to date– ~2.1M Ionospheric profiles to date– All spacecraft and payloads functioning with minor

degradation– Operations funded through April 2011

• Ground Network Status– UCAR Coordinating COSMIC Data Download

operations from Alaska, Norway, and McMurdo - Nominal Status

– COSMIC Bit Grabber (GPS Navigation Data Bits) network – Nominal Status

Science Highlights– Significant positive impact on skill scores of operational

NWP Centers (e.g., NCEP, ECMWF, UMKO, Meteo France)– Large impact in individual forecasts (e.g. Hurricane

Ernesto 2006)– Unbiased, good “anchor” for radiance assimilation– Observations of atmospheric boundary layer from space

for 1st time– Conducting inter-agency climate trend study using GPS RO,

which offers an accuracy of ~0.03%/5 years Community

– Free and open data policy– >1100 registered users from 52 countries– In collaboration with EOL, COSMIC provides near real-time

data in support of field campaigns (VOCALS, T-PARC, TiMREX)

– Near real-time COSMIC data distribution via UNIDATA’s LDM

– Supporting SOARS education and research– Planning 4th COSMIC Data Users workshop, 27-29 Oct 09

with JOSS COSMIC-II Planning

– Providing Mission and Science support to NOAA, NSF, and NSPO

– Joint sponsor of NOAA / JPL / UCAR GNSS RO workshop in Pasadena April 7-9, 2009

– Co-organizing COSMIC OSSE Workshop, 3-4 September 2009.

Number of COSMIC Atmospheric Profiles

Improvements to CDAAC Neutral Atmospheric Inversion Software

Statistical comparison of COSMIC and ECMWF (high resolution model) fractional refractivity differences versus altitude (km) for 1 July 2007. The left panel is for COSMIC inversions that use the sliding median filter and the right panel is for inversions that don’t use the sliding median filter. The red lines are the mean differences, the green lines are the standard deviations of the differences, and the blue lines are the number of samples.

OLD Inversion Software NEW Inversion Software

• Data assimilation scientists have developed adjoint based tools to estimate how observation types contribute to the reduction of a 24 hour forecast error. See ECMWF workshop presentations. http://www.ecmwf.int/newsevents/meetings/workshops/2009/Diagnostics_DA_System_Performance/index.html

• Carla Cardinali has recently completed this type of calculation for the ECMWF system and GPSRO has performed well.

Forecast Error Sensitivity to Observation (FSO)Carla Cardinali (ECMWF)

Courtesy: Sean HealyWS on OSSE for COSMIC Follow-OnTaipei Taiwan, Sept 3-4, 2009

FSO Results

-1500 -1300 -1100 -900 -700 -500 -300 -100 100

SYNOPAIREPDRIBUTEMPPILOTGOESGMSMETEOMODISSCATHIRSAMSUAAIRSIASIGPS-ROSSMIMHSAMSUBAMSREMEMSGMTSATIGOES-RO3

Forecast error contribution (J)

Courtesy: Sean HealyWS on OSSE for COSMIC Follow-OnTaipei Taiwan, Sept 3-4, 2009

GPS RO has significant impact (ranked #5 amongall observing systems) in reducing Forecast Errors, despite the small number of soundings.

Suominet – PBO Stations • 80 Plate

Boundary Observatory (PBO) sites now included in analysis.

•These sites significantly improve moisture observations in western US.

•Should be useful for spring/summer precipitation studies.

•Network routine exceeds 300 stations.

Science Highlight: Soil Moisture and Snow Depth Retrievals with

GPS

Collaborative research between COSMIC, the University of Colorado (ASEN – Larson and GEOL – Small), and NOAA-ETL (Zavorotny) has lead to development of new algorithms to measure soil moisture (top) and snow depth (next slide) using geodetic ground based GPS instrumentation. The time series above shows GPS retrievals of volumetric water content (VWC) as colored circles; VWC from nultiple in situ water content reflectometers (gray shading- peak to peak scatter and black line – mean); precipitation events are shown as blue bars.

Larson, et. al, (2008), Use of GPS receivers as a soil moisture network for water cycle studies, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L24405, doi:10.1029/2008GL036013

Community Infrastructure Proposal: Advanced Real-Time GNSS Network for Atmosphere and Ocean

Science

•COSMIC is developing a plan to create a national network of streaming GPS stations for meteorology applications. The plan will include the following new capabilities:

1. PW updates with frequency and latency similar to WSR-88D network (<10 minutes)2. Deployment of GPS instrumentation on fixed and mobile platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

•Collaborative effort includes participants from October 2008 Ocean Platforms workshop. •Contact J. Braun (braunj@ucar.edu) if other universities interested in participation.