Observing deep convection with NASA’s TROPICS mission

<p>NASA&#8217;s &#8216;Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats&#8217; (TROPICS) mission will consist of four 3U CubeSats, likely to be launched in May 2023. TROPICS will enable passive microwave observations of tropical cyclones with an unprecedented temporal resolution. Each satellite is equipped with cross-track scanning microwave sounders covering the 118 GHz oxygen and 183 GHz water vapor absorption bands as well as channels at 92 and 204 GHz. As a precursor to the full mission, the TROPICS Pathfinder satellite was launched in June 2021 and has provided valuable science data since August 2021.</p> <p>We will present a short overview on NASA&#8217;s TROPICS mission as well as a novel K-D-tree-based approach to derive temperature and moisture profiles alongside estimates of surface precipitation and ice water path over deep convection from TROPICS Pathfinder.&#160;<span lang="EN-GB">In addition to the retrieved atmospheric parameters, the novel retrieval approach allows for an estimate of how likely it is for a given retrieval to be representative and for rigorous Bayesian uncertainty estimates associated with each parameter. </span>Results will be presented for various tropical storms and compared against established precipitation products such as NASA&#8217;s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) and the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP).</p>