1 . FY12-13 GIMPAP Project Proposal Title Page date: 7 August 2012

1. 1. FY12-13 GIMPAP Project Proposal Title Pagedate: 7 August 2012 16 Title: Reprocessing Geo-Polar Blended SST analyses in support of NOAA Coral Reef Watch Status: New Start Project Leads: Eileen Maturi / NESDIS/STAR/SOCD / eileen.maturi@noaa.gov Other Participants: Jonathan Mittaz/ University of Maryland/CICS Andrew Harris/ University of Maryland/CICS Mark Eakin/ NESDIS/STAR/SOCD/CORAL REEF WATCH Sasha Ignatov/ NESDIS/STAR/SOCD

2. 2. Project Summary • The reprocessing of the NESDIS operational daily 5-km geo-polar blended SST analysis: • Day-Night • Night-only • October 2004-present

3. 3. Motivation / Justification • Coral Reef Watch (CRW) operates the only global decision support system for tropical ocean coral reef ecosystem management and its most critical component is the sea surface temperature (SST)-based coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring suite • This product suite serves the coral reef community by providing timely information on mass coral bleaching events that have been devastating U.S. and global coral reefs • These events are predicted to worsen in the coming decades • Advances in coral reef management practices require higher resolution monitoring at reef or near reef scales • The operational daily 5-km geo-polar day-night blended SST analysis and the daily 5-km geo-polar nighttime-only blended SST analysis provide a high-quality SST that will be used to generate the new CRW coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring product suite and allow for retirement of the heritage 50-km twice-weekly SST. The new suite will provide thermal stress information with significantly improved quality, data density, and spatial coverage for direct coral reef area applications • CRW’s bleaching thermal stress monitoring products are positive-only anomaly-based products that require a high-quality climatology to provide accurate and sensitive thermal stress measurements at any given time and any given location in the ocean • A new climatology for CRW’s thermal stress monitoring products is needed which covers a sufficient period of time and needs to have characteristics matching the geo-polar 5-km product. CRW are planning using AVHRR Pathfinder data but this needs to be calibrated against an extended period of geo-polar 5km data.   • Currently available geo-polar 5-km data insufficient to define reference climatology • Data generation started in 2012 so extremely limited data to define the climatology • Anomaly thresholds need to be defined against periods when major bleaching has occurred. Important periods include the global mass coral bleaching in 2010, the 2005 record-setting bleaching event in the Caribbean, and the 2006 bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.

4. 4. Methodology • Obtain historical data • Reprocess geostationary data • Obtain reprocessed AVHRR ACSPO data • Run Geo-Polar SST Analysis • Validation of 2, 3, 4 Estimated completion 1 year from start of project

5. 4. Methodology (cont.) Obtain Historical Data • Geostationary data • All data from 2010 – present already available @STAR • MTSAT-1R (GOES-9) ~140E • June 2006 – end 2009 already obtained from Australian Bureau of Meteorology • Prior to June 2006 may be available from JMA (cost?) • GOES-9 prior to October 2005 from CLASS • Meteosat 8/9 ~0E • Available from EUMETSAT at no cost in 2-3 months • GOES-E/W 75W & 135W • From CLASS (available/9 weeks and .1 FTE) • NWP fields • Processing uses NCEP GFS • We have GFS 26-level data back to 2004 (HDF format) • Reference SST fields • Reynolds 0.25 degree available from NCDC

6. 4. Methodology (cont.) Reprocess Geostationary Data • Set up parallel processing system for historical data • Port latest operational code/scripts to STAR development system • Includes streamlining/optimization • Installation of solid-state drives on reprocessing machines required in order to avoid disk-thrashing when running in parallel • Staging of data from tape to disk • Use tape library • Process in (e.g.) 1-year blocks • Based on test runs, estimate processing time for 1 year ~ 1 month • Validation of output • Ongoing, important to ensure processing issues are identified and dealt with in a timely fashion

7. 4. Methodology (cont.) Obtain reprocessed AVHRR/ACSPO data • This is being undertaken by Sasha Ignatov’s group under a separate (funded) ORS proposal • Timescale for reprocessing of the AVHRR is 1 year from start of ORS proposal • Processed and validated data will then be passed to us as it is generated

8. 4. Methodology (cont.) Run POES-GOES Analysis • Adapt to nighttime-only (in progress) as well as day-night • Day/night and nighttime-only are required due to uncertainties in the adjustments for diurnal solar heating at the sea surface in the current satellite SST algorithm and unavailability of SST measurements during periods of cloud cover • Parallelize operation • Optimize overlap procedure • Scripts for checking • Ensure results are compatible w/ operational output • Determine optimal parallelization with respect to production of input data • Run analysis • Will run alongside reprocessing of Geo and Polar data as data is produced in year blocks (with overlap) • Continuous validation to detect issues in a timely manner

9. 5. Expected Outcomes • Will allow CRW to produce reliable coral bleaching thermal stress products by providing an accurate, multi-year 5-km SST data set covering mass, minor, and no coral bleaching events in recent years, all of which are critical to variance and bias adjust the Pathfinder-based climatology, and to test the 5-km SST based coral bleaching thermal stress products developed against bleaching observations from the field • Will help CRW indentify whether adjustments of the bleaching thresholds are needed for tuning the algorithms for accurate satellite coral bleaching thermal stress monitoring • Will provide a re-analysis capability as the operational geostationary, polar and Geo-Polar blended algorithms change to maintain an up-to-date climatology for anomaly based users for the Geo-Polar blended SST product

10. 6. First Year - Preliminary Results • N/A • 1 year project

11. 7. Possible Path to Operations • Since the SST analysis software is already operational, there is no path to operations in the strictest sense • However, it is important to recognize that operational anomaly-based products products depend on a stable climatology • Whenever there are significant improvements in operational products, reprocessing should be undertaken to ensure that anomalies derived from these products are real and not due to algorithm improvements • This project should be considered a blueprint for reprocessing of level-2 and level-4 products to provide the all-important baseline climatology

12. 8. FY13 Milestones • Obtain historical data • Reprocess geostationary data • Obtain reprocessed AVHRR data • Run Geo-Polar SST Analysis • Validation of 2, 3, 4

13. 9. Funding Request (K)

14. 10. Spending Plan FY13 • FY13 $236,000 Total Project Budget • Grant to CICS-126K • 1 CICS Scientist 2/3 FTE and 2nd CICS scientist 1/3 FTE • Travel -0% • Publication charge -0% • Other – 0% • Federal Travel – 0% • Federal Publication Charges – 0% • Federal Equipment – 0% • Transfers to other agencies – 0.1 FTE to NCDC to acquire GOES data • Contractor- 1FTE for 1 year