NOAA CWDP2 Data Evaluation and Forecast Impact

Abstract:

Over the past few years, The DoD, NOAA and NASA have initiated pilot projects to evaluate the potential of commercially acquired data as a cost-effective means to augment and/or complement the suite of Earth observations acquired by DoD and other U.S. government agencies as well as international partners and agencies. This round of Commercial Weather Data Pilot (CWDP) projects ended in early 2020 and most of the experiments have focused on Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) observations. Introduced in the 90s, GNSS-RO measurement is now a mature technology whose relatively low-cost receivers are very well suited for deployment on privately owned small-satellite constellations.

The Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) has actively participated in NOAA's CWDP initiatives and has conducted end-to-end evaluations of GNSS-RO data from all selected vendors, including forecast impact assessment in quasi-operational conditions. Pending on the release of the final report by NOAA, the results of this evaluation will be presented, and the lessons learned during this second round of the pilot project will be summarized.