RTTOV v13.0 has been released. Updates from v12.3 include: new gas optical depth coefficients based on updated spectroscopy and new optical depth predictors; new “all trace gas” coefficients for various hyperspectral and non-hyperspectral VIS/IR sensors; for visible channels, a new parameterisation of Rayleigh extinction that may now optionally be excluded from simulations; option to treat Rayleigh multiple scattering in the DOM solver; updated VIS/IR cloud liquid water optical properties based on a newer refractive index dataset; new parameterisation for cloud liquid water effective diameter; optimisation of the MFASIS fast model and the DOM solver AD/K models; and RTTOV-SCATT updates to allow an arbitrary number of hydrometeor species, option to input per-hydrometeor cloud fraction profiles, new approximate treatment of polarised scattering by frozen hydrometeors, new options for generating MW scattering optical property tables, and an active MW sensor capability. See the RTTOV pages for more information.

The ECMWF/NWP SAF workshop on the treatment of random and systematic errors in satellite data assimilation for NWP is currently taking place (2-5 November 2020) virtually, with livestreamed talks. You can find information on the workshop here, including links to the full programme and livestream.

Timeliness plots and statistics for DBNet data are now generated daily and linked from the DBNet Monitoring “overview” page https://nwp-saf.eumetsat.int/site/monitoring/dbnet/. This is a preliminary service and further developments are planned in the coming months. It is expected that the information will be useful to both DBNet operators and NWP users.

The new functionalities in CADS V3.1 include aerosol type classification, detection of excessive trace gas contamination in IR data, situation-dependent identification of IR channels that are sensitive to land surface emission, and support for the Russian-made Infrared Fourier Spectrometer -2 (IKFS-2). For more information please see the CADS page at https://nwp-saf.eumetsat.int/site/software/aerosol-and-cloud-detection/.

AAPP update 8.6 has been released. This contains a number of routine updates and bug fixes. For details, please see the Release Note that is available at https://nwp-saf.eumetsat.int/site/software/aapp/documentation/release-history/