Observing System Simulation Experiments Exploring Potential Spaceborne Deployment Options for a Differential Absorption Radar Measuring Marine Surface Pressures.

A new technology for remote measurements of marine surface pressure has been proposed, employing a V‐band differential absorption radar and a radiometric temperature sounder to calculate the total column atmospheric mass. Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) are performed to evaluate the potential impact of Spaceborne Marine Surface Pressure (SMSP) on Numerical Weather Prediction. These experiments build on prior efforts (Privé, McLinden, et al., 2023, https://doi.org/10.16993/tellusa.3254), but with an updated version of the OSSE framework and with more sophisticated simulation of the SMSP observations and a longer experiment period. Several different instrument configurations are compared, including both scanning and non‐scanning orbits. SMSP impacts are calculated for analysis quality and forecast skill, and a forecast sensitivity observation impact tool is employed to place SMSP observations in context with the global observing network. The effects of rain contamination on observation quality are explored. Different magnitudes of simulated SMSP observation error are tested in the context of data assimilation to show the range of potential behaviors. Overall, SMSP observations are found to be most beneficial in the southern hemisphere extratropics, with statistically significant forecast improvements for the first 72 hr of the forecast. A constellation of four non‐scanning SMSP satellites is found to outperform a single scanning instrument with a 250 km wide swath. Plain Language Summary: Measurements of surface pressure are very useful for weather prediction because they tell us about phenomena such as winter storms, as well as large scale atmospheric circulation patterns. Over the ocean, the only surface pressure measurements currently come from buoys and some ships, but these measurements are very far apart. Recently, some new radar technology is under development that would allow ocean surface pressures to be remotely retrieved from aircraft or satellites. In this work, these proposed new radar surface pressure measurements are simulated and tested in a weather forecast model. Several different configurations of an orbiting spaceborne radar are simulated and compared to find out how much the radar data would improve weather forecasts. The results show that a constellation of four smaller radar satellites has the most improvement on weather prediction. The effect of instrument noise was also tested, and it was found that the radar was helpful for weather forecasts for a wide range of instrument performance. Key Points: The greatest observation impacts are found in the southern hemisphere extratropics, with neutral impacts in the tropicsThe most beneficial observation impacts occur with a four‐satellite platform of non‐scanning instrumentsBeneficial impacts are found for a wide range of observation error magnitudes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]