Development of a microwave radiative transfer simulation tool for the NPOESS program

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is the converged weather satellite program for the US Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NPOESS will provide significant improvements in meteorological and related measurement capabilities in comparison to current operational polar orbiting weather satellites. The availability of the first NPOESS satellite is estimated to be about 2007. In support of the NPOESS program, the authors are developing a Microwave Radiative Transfer Modeling and Simulation Tool, MRT Sim. This paper is an overview of this tool. MRT Sim is written primarily in Python with selected portions in IDL, C and Fortran. The software architecture and design are presented including the user interface, input/output data structure, and specific implementation on a Unix workstation. The physical basis of the models and radiative transfer engine are discussed The tool has a user-friendly, widget-based interface, a modular and extensible design, and cross platform portability