Cohort Level: Cohort - II

Career Goal: To be a research scientist working in atmospheric science.

Expected Graduation Date: December 31, 2020

Degree: PhD Atmospheric Science

Research Title: Validation of OMPS-LP Ozone Measurements Using SAGE III-ISS and Ozonesonde Measurements

Research Synopsis: The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) is NOAA’s next generation of ozone monitoring instruments. OMPS consists of a suite of three instruments, the Nadir Mapper (NM), Nadir Profiler (NP), and Limb Profiler (LP). The NP and NM were included in both the Suomi-NPP and JPSS-01 missions, while the LP was included on just Suomi-NPP, but all three are planned to fly once again on JPSS-02 and further into the future. My project is centered around characterizing the OMPS-LP instrument and how it compares to other high vertical resolution ozone profiling instruments, namely from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III-ISS) and ozonesondes, specifically from the Ozone Water Land Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS) campaign. Characterizing and validating the instrument will help with future efforts of being able to update the NOAA Unique Combined Atmosphere Processing system (NUCAPS) ozone product by including OMPS-LP data into the product as a stratospheric a-priori. NUCAPS is NOAA’s operational ozone product which can be used by the National Weather Service. Updating the stratospheric a-prior to OMPS-LP data could improve the product by helping to identify stratospheric intrusions and make temperature corrections, which could in turn improve predictive models and weather forecasts