Community Satellite Processing Package

  CSPP Microwave integrated Retrieval System (MiRS) Software Version 3.0 Release

7 March 2022

The University of Wisconsin-Madison SSEC is pleased to announce a new release of the NOAA/NESDIS/STAR Microwave integrated Retrieval System (MiRS) software for retrieval of atmospheric profiles, cloud and surface properties from NOAA-20 and S-NPP ATMS, and NOAA-18,-19, Metop-A,-B,-C AMSU-A and MHS microwave sensor data. This package is in support of Direct Broadcast users, and is sponsored by the Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP) project funded by the NOAA/NASA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). MiRS is led by Quanhua (Mark) Liu and Chris Grassotti at the NOAA NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR). This release provides MiRS version 11.8 adapted and tested for operation in a real-time direct broadcast environment. For more information on MiRS, please visit https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/mirs/.

The CSPP_MIRS v3.0 software package contains binary executable files and supporting static data files, as well as input and output files for verification of a successful installation. Source code for the MiRS package is not included in this release. Source code can be provided upon receipt of a signed NOAA license agreement available from this website: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/mirs/download.php.

What is new in CSPP MiRS Version 3.0?
  • Code base updated to Version 11.8,
  • Software is now packaged within a Singularity container,
  • Updates to the Snow Fall Rate (SFR) algorithm.
System requirements for the CSPP_MIRS v3.0 software are as follows:
  • Singularity version 3.7.3 or above,
  • Intel or AMD CPU with 64-bit instruction support,
  • 8 GB RAM,
  • CentOS-7.9 64-bit Linux; the software has also been tested on Rocky Linux release 8.5,
  • 2 GB of disk space (plus space for your own DB data and CSPP_MIRS products).
Supported satellites, sensors, and data include:
  • NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP ATMS Sensor Data Records (SDR) (from CSPP)
  • NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 AMSU-A and MHS Level 1B (from AAPP)
    • Note: The NOAA-18 MHS instrument began experiencing problems on 20 October 2018 and is not supported after this event.
  • Metop-A, Metop-B and Metop-C AMSU-A and MHS Level 1B (from AAPP)
    • Note: Metop-A instruments were switched off on 15 November 2021.
Two NetCDF4 files are created by the CSPP MiRS software:
  • NPR-MIRS-IMG_v11r8_<satid>_sYYYYMMDDHHMMSSS_eYYYYMMDDHHMMSSS_c*.nc
  • NPR-MIRS-SND_v11r8_<satid>_sYYYYMMDDHHMMSSS_eYYYYMMDDHHMMSSS_c*.nc
The MiRS sounding products are written into the "NPR-MIRS-SND" prefixed file, while surface and precipitation products are written to the “NPR-MIRS-IMG” prefixed file.

Official Validated Products created by MiRS include:
  • Temperature profile over open water ocean
  • Humidity profile over open water ocean
  • Humidity profile over non-coastal Land
  • Total Precipitable Water (TPW) over open water ocean
  • Total Precipitable Water over non-coastal land
  • Land surface temperature
  • Surface Emissivity over land and snow
  • Snow Water Equivalent (SWE)
  • Sea Ice Concentration (SIC)
  • Snow Cover Extent (SCE), based on the SWE
  • Vertically-Integrated Non-precipitating Cloud Liquid Water (CLW) over open water ocean
  • Vertically-Integrated Ice Water Path (IWP)
  • Vertically-Integrated Rain Water Path (RWP)
  • Rainfall Rate (RR) over open water ocean and non-coastal, non-snow-covered land surface types
  • Effective grain size of snow (over snow-covered land surface)*
  • Multi-Year (MY) Type Sea Ice Concentration*
  • First-Year (FY) Type Sea Ice Concentration*
  • Snow Fall Rate (SFR)**
  • Probability of Falling Snow (Prob_SF)**

    • *Note that FY and MY Sea Ice Concentration, as well as Snow Grain Size are not officially operational, but preliminary products, which is a higher maturity level than experimental status.
    **Note that snowfall rate is not produced for Metop-A and NOAA-18.
Experimental Products (not fully validated) created by MiRS: The following products are also produced experimentally for NOAA-18, NOAA-19, Metop-A, Metop-B, Metop-C, Suomi-NPP, and NOAA-20. Note that they lack a thorough validation due to the absence of reliable ground truth measurements. These are made available to users for the purpose of evaluating their usefulness.
  • Cloud Liquid Water Profile (CLWP) over ocean
  • Surface Temperature (skin) extended to snow-covered land surface type
  • Surface Temperature (skin) extended to open ocean water

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