Observing Clouds, Convection and Precipitation with a Geostationary Microwave Sounder

A geostationary microwave sounder, GeoSTAR, capable of providing continuous monitoring every 15 minutes of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds, precipitation, and wind in the presence of clouds, convection and precipitation, which will add tremendously to our ability to observe rapidly evolving dynamic atmospheric phenomena, has been developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. GeoSTAR uses aperture synthesis to overcome the difficulty of attaining adequate spatial resolution from geostationary orbit and is made possible with new technology that has been fully tested. Plans have been developed at JPL for a mission focused on observing severe convective storms - tropical cyclones, mesoscale convective systems, and extratropical cyclones - with a goal of improving our understanding, modeling and prediction of these destructive phenomena, and such a mission could be a key element in NASA's response to the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey [1].