Atmospheric Temperature Climate Data Record from POES Microwave Sounders to JPSS/ATMS

SPECIAL NOTICE - INTENT TO AWARD ON A SOLE SOURCE BASIS This is a special notice for commercial items in accordance with the simplified acquisition procedures authorized in FAR Part 13. This announcement constitutes the intent to award on a sole source basis; proposals are not being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. Under this notice 1333MD18QNEED0067, this award will be issued other than small business under NAICS Code 541712 with Global Environment and Natural Resources Institute/ Environmental Science and Technology Center, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030; Description of requirements is as follows: NOAA/STAR has been conducting research and producing climate-quality CDRs from the MSU/AMSU/SSU sounding channels. Merged MSU/AMSU, SSU/AMSU, and AMSU-only data products were released and are being used for climate trend studies. The objective of this work is to extend the current STAR MSU/AMSU-A deep-layer atmospheric temperature CDR to the JPSS/ATMS/CrIS observations, allowing climate change monitoring in the JPSS era. This CDR will include global monthly layer temperatures of mid-troposphere (TMT), upper-troposphere (TUT), lower-stratosphere (TLS), mid-stratosphere (TMS), upper-stratosphere (TUS), and top-stratosphere (TTS) with a 2.5°x2.5° latitude/longitude spatial resolution. Since the MSU observations ended in 2006 and they have already been merged with the AMSU-A observations, the extension of the MSU/AMSU CDR only involves inter-calibration and merging between the ongoing AMSU-A observations and ATMS. The channel-based MSU/AMSU-A time series will be respectively extended to the ATMS channels 6, 8, and 10, which have exactly the same central frequencies as the AMSU-A channels 5, 7, and 9, respectively. This work will result in an upgraded version of the STAR layer temperature CDRs by including the SNPP ATMS observations. This new version will be made freely available at the designated STAR website for public access. In addition, investigation on the merging of SSU with the hyperspectral sounder CrIS is needed for the SSU extension. Specific tasks are described below. 1. Inter-calibrate the SNPP ATMS observations with AMSU-A data onboard NOAA-15 to NOAA-18, NASA EOS and European MetOp satellites using the Integrated Microwave Inter-Calibration Approach (IMICA) developed by the STAR team to generate consistent ATMS and AMSU-A radiance sensor data records (SDRs). This task is intended to examine and remove/minimize inter-sensor biases and bias drift, if any, due to different calibration offsets, inaccurate calibration nonlinearity, instrument temperature effect, and frequency shift, etc. 2. Develop limb- and diurnal-adjustments for the ATMS using the same approach applied for the AMSU-A instrument in the STAR MSU/AMSU-A dataset. This task is intended to remove biases due to different viewing angles and local observation time in the ATMS observations. 3. Merge the bias-corrected ATMS observations with the AMSU-A measurements for TMT, TUT, and TLS, respectively. This merging involves treatment of scanning pattern differences between the ATMS and AMSU-A instruments. An optimal combination of FOVs from the ATMS will be selected to match with the AMSU-A data. 4. Validate and compare the merged MSU/AMSU-A/ATMS temperature products against the same products but without the ATMS observations in them and against those from other teams. This task is intended to understand and characterize the uncertainties and potential bias correction issues for quality assurance in the finally merged datasets. 5. Investigate merging approaches for an extension of the SSU observations to the hyperspectral sounders AIRS/CrIS. Investigate how differences in scanning geometry and channel frequencies between the two types of instruments affect the merging accuracy. Develop prototype test datasets for community evaluation.