NexSat - Previewing NPOESS/VIIRS imagery capabilities

Under the auspices of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System's (NPOESS) Integrated Program Office (IPO), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has developed NexSat (www.nrlmry.navy. mil/nexsat pages/nexsat home. - html)-a public-access online demonstration over the continental United States (CONUS) of near-real-time environmental products highlighting future applications from the Visible/Infrared Imager/ Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). Based on a collection of operational and research-grade satellite observing systems, NexSat products include the detection, enhancement, and where applicable, physical retrieval of deep convection, low clouds, light sources at night, rainfall, snow cover, aircraft contrails, thin cirrus layers, dust storms, and cloud/ aerosol properties, all presented in the context of value-added imagery. The purpose of NexSat is threefold: 1) to communicate the advanced capabilities anticipated from VIIRS, 2) to present this information in near-real time for use by forecasters, resource managers, emergency response teams, civic planners, the aviation community, and various government agencies, and 3) to augment the NRL algorithm development multisensor/model-fusion test bed for accelerated transitions to operations during the NPOESS era. This paper presents an overview of NexSat, highlighting selected products from the diverse meteorological phenomenology over the CONUS.