NPP Sends Back First Water Vapor Measurements

Officials at NASA say that the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite has already produced its first measurements of water vapors in Earth's lower atmosphere, just two weeks after launch.

The spacecraft took off on October 28 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), in California. The procedure went on without a hitch, and the satellite passed through its commissioning, testing and validation phases with flying colors.

Certain calibrations still have to be made to its instruments but, by and large, the satellite is operational, as evidenced by this image. The dataset was collected using the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instrument.

NASA says that the data used to create this view were collected on Tuesday, November 8, using ATMS' channel 18. This particular channel is extremely sensitive to water vapor concentrations, while other channels can be used for keeping tracks on a variety of other atmospheric parameters.

“NPP is rock solid. The satellite has performed extremely well during the checkout maneuvers and is in the expert hands of the mission operations team at NSOF,” NPP project manager Ken Schwer explains.

The expert is based at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Maryland. NSOF is the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Satellite Operations Facility, in Suitland, Maryland.

“NPP data will improve our forecast skills out to 5 to 7 days in advance of extreme weather events, including hurricanes, and severe weather outbreaks,” adds the director of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Protection, Dr. Louis Uccellini.

“With NPP, our goal is to make the accurate forecasts achieved for this year’s events even better in the future,” the expert adds. NPP features a suite of five scientific instruments. Of them, the best one to pair ATMS with is the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS).

This combo can be used to create high-resolution temperature and moisture profiles of Earth's atmosphere. In the long-run, such profiles will help climate scientists create more accurate models for predicting the influence of global warming and climate change on the world.