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Satellite Application Facility for Numerical Weather Prediction

The NWP SAF is a EUMETSAT-funded activity that exists to co-ordinate research and development efforts among the SAF partners to improve the interface between satellite data and NWP for the benefit of EUMETSAT member states. The NWP SAF is led by the Met Office, with partners ECMWF, KNMI and Météo-France. More about the aims of the NWP SAF.

NWP SAF overview from EUMETSAT's IMAGE newsletter (PDF file)

 NWP SAF deliverables
The SAF is concerned with the NWP data assimilation process rather than with generating geophysical parameters. Its main deliverables are software packages and data monitoring reports.
 NWP SAF news
  • AAPP update 7.12 has been released. Changes include updates new options for AVHRR processing and some bug fixes. More information is available on the AAPP pages. 24 Feb 2016.
  • The first public version of the Pencil beam Wind Processor (PenWP) has been released. PenWP generates surface winds from backscatter data from the SeaWinds (on QuikSCAT or ADEOS-II), OSCAT (on Oceansat-2), HSCAT (on HY-2A) and RapidScat (on the International Space Station) scatterometer instruments. It replaces the existing wind processors for SeaWinds (SDP) and OSCAT (OWDP) and is designed as a generic wind processor for all existing and future pencil beam Ku-band scatterometer instruments. See the Scatterometer pages for more information. 17 Dec 2015.
  • Version 2.2 of the Aerosol and Cloud Detection Software has been released. The new version provides an update to the aerosol detection, which is now based on observed infrared radiance data only and is activated at all locations regardless of whether cloud is diagnosed or not. See the Cloud Detection Software pages for more information. 26 Nov 2015.
  • AAPP update 7.11 has been released. Changes include updates to the hdf5 converters and inclusion of NEDT information in the processing of ATOVS. More information is available on the AAPP pages. 26 Nov 2015.
  • Radiance Simulator v1.1 has been publicly released. Changes from the previous release, v1.0, include support for HDF5 RTTOV coefficient files and 32-bit Met Office Fieldsfiles and improved capability to process large numbers of profiles/channels. There is now also an option to change the default zenith angle for model grid runs. The release also features multiple other enhancements and bugfixes. See the Radiance Simulator pages for more information. 30 Oct 2015.
 Further news items can be seen on the NWP SAF News page.
 Visiting scientists

A visiting scientist programme allows scientists from institutions that are not SAF members to participate in the activities of the SAF. More about visiting scientists.
 Contact us
Questions for other users and developers can be posted on the RTTOV or AAPP Forums. To contact us with other enquiries, please use the NWP SAF Helpdesk link, or use a software request form to request a software deliverable.
 Members' site
This area of the site is restricted to the NWP SAF Development Team.

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