Multi-scale Atmospheric Prediction System for Radiance Clutter (MAPS-C)

Atmospheric radiance clutter is a significant impediment to remotely-sensed target identification and surveillance. Clutter events arise from atmospheric phenomena occurring over wide vertical and horizontal scales. These include polar mesospheric clouds, aurora, stratospheric warming, thermal inversions, gravity waves, and mesospheric bores. To forecast radiance clutter from these events for any viewing geometry requires modeling of whole atmospheric conditions (i.e., troposphere to thermosphere) on a global scale. Furthermore, surveillance needs dictate that this be provided at the highest spatial resolution (e.g., ~100 m). To address this critical need, we propose to develop the MAPS-C (Multi-scale Atmospheric Prediction System for Clutter) system to provide 72-hour forecasts of atmospheric clutter conditions. The difficult computational task is addressed by incorporating into MAPS-C, state-of-the-art global and mesoscale atmospheric models (WACCM and WRF) being developed by the scientific community, and the SSI-developed all-altitudes radiation transport code (SAMM2). In Phase I, user-defined clutter phenomena will be embedded into the dynamical core of these models to provide a unified system for modeling the spatial-temporal evolution of clutter radiance. Additionally, a sub-kilometer statistical description of clutter will be provided by an ensemble forecasting tool.