The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite-Assimilation Experiment (OMPS-AE)

The major weather services worldwide have concluded that longer-term tropospheric weather forecasting will require a more realistic treatment of the stratosphere. A major research effort is now underway at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to extend the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) into the stratosphere. The extended NOGAPS must assimilate and forecast ozone because absorption of UV radiation by ozone provides the primary energy input into the stratosphere. This energy input is a major driver of the stratospheric circulation, which, in turn, significantly affects the large-scale movement of surface weather systems. Operational ozone data for the extended NOGAPS will be obtained from the NPOESS Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS). OMPS consists of a nadir-viewing instrument that measures the ozone total column and profile (similar to TOMS & SBUV/2), and a limb-viewing instrument designed to measure the ozone profile between the tropopause and 60 km. OMPS-like ozone data are needed for developing and testing the extensions to NOGAPS. We have proposed an early flight of OMPS, OMPS-AE (OMPS-Assimilation Experiment), to provide such data. We are also exploring techniques for merging and extending data from existing satellite measurements of ozone profiles to produce 3D global ozone fields. In the future we will conduct experiments in which the global ozone fields from OMPS-AE or the data fusion experiments will be assimilated into the extended NOGAPS, with the aim of evaluating assimilation methodologies and increased forecasting skill.