workshop attendees
Workshop attendees (click to enlarge)
September 3, 2010

HMT links with joint NOAA-NASA efforts related to a new NASA satellite - Precipitation Measurement Mission

The importance of precipitation measurements and the physical processes that lead to its formation was the impetus to the development and subsequent launch of NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite in 1997. As this data became more widely available to the operational community, NOAA developed science and forecasting applications that used these unique data. As part of the follow-on to TRMM, NASA has been planning a more global satellite system referred to as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, and is coordinating with NOAA early in its planning under the auspices of the Precipitation Measurements Mission (PMM) Science Team. Following up on a key recommendation from a National Research Council Report (NRC, 2007), HMT has been part of this coordination now for 3 years, including co-sponsoring (via USWRP support) with NASA, NESDIS and OAR a three-year cycle of grants to NOAA investigators who were part of the NASA PMM science team. Following this experience, a new three year cycle of grants has been initiated under a similar joint sponsorship, and has grown to roughly $800K per year supporting 6 separate projects.

Additional coordination between NASA and NOAA on PMM has occurred through the creation of a "NOAA Steering Group (SG) on Precipitation Measurements from Space," which is co-chaired by Ralph Ferraro of NESDIS and Dave Kitzmiller of NWS. The SG includes members from OAR, NESDIS, and NWS, and has generated a long-range vision with detailed planning documents for NOAAÕs out year program planning. The SG has also just conducted the 1st NOAA User Workshop on GPM, held from 18-19 August in College Park, MD. This meeting included keynote talks by Mary Kicza, the AA for NESDIS, and senior managers and scientists from OAR, NESDIS and NWS, as well as NASAÕs leadership on GPM, including Ramesh Kakar, GPM Program Scientist and Arthur Hou, GPM Project Scientist. HMT was represented by Tim Schneider and scientists involved in PMM-related research and experts on potential uses of PMM data related to HMTÕs objectives.

Future directions for HMT in terms of NOAA-NASA coordination on PMM include use by PMM Science Team members of data collected in past HMT deployments, as well as planning for future joint field experiments between HMT and NASA focused on ground validation of satellite precipitation algorithms and hydrologic applications. A key payoff for HMT is the advancement of satellite-based techniques that could contribute to better monitoring of precipitation both offshore, and over land in conjunction with radar and surface observations.

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