A MESOSCALE NUMERICAL WEATHER FORECAST SYSTEM FOR USE IN SHUTTLE OPERATIONS

THE PROPOSED INNOVATION SYNTHESIZES THREE HIGH TECHNOLOGY TOOLS IN AN EFFORT TO DEVELOP A RELIABLE NUMERICAL MESOSCALEWEATHER FORECAST SYSTEM FOR USE AT THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTER FOR SHUTTLE LAUNCH AND LANDING OPERATIONS. THESE TOOLS ARE:(1) AN ADVANCED MESOSCALE NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTION MODEL, I.E., THE MESOSCALE ATMOSPHERIC SIMULATION SYSTEM (MASS), (2) THE CRAY-2 SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM, AND (3) ASYNOPTIC DATA SETS DERIVED FROM RADARS, SATELLITES, AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS. THE PHASE I RESEARCH WILL BE DESIGNED TO TEST THE FEASIBILITY OF UTILIZING SOME OF THE AVAILABLE SATELLITE, RADAR, AND SURFACE DATA SETS TO INITIALIZE THE MASS MODEL. THIS WILL TEST THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE INTRODUCTION OF THIS INFORMATION INTO THE MODEL WILL RESULT IN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ACCURACY OF THE PREDICTION OF AN OBSERVED SQUALL LINE WHICH PRODUCES SEVERE CONVECTION AT THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTER. A VARIETY OF SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS ARE PLANNED WHICH TEST THE VALUE OF ADDING ASYNOPTIC OBSERVED RELATIVE HUMIDITY, SURFACE TEMPERATURE, PRESSURE, SOIL MOISTURE, AND WIND INFORMATION INTO THE MASS MODEL'S INITIAL STATE. RESULTS OF THE SENSITIVITY STUDIES WILL BE COMPARED TO OBSERVATIONS OF CONVECTION, SURFACE WINDS, PRESSURES, TEMPERATURES, AND RAINFALL. A COMPARISON WITH A CONTROL SIMULATION, I.E., A SIMULATION WITHOUT ASYNOPTIC DATA, WILL DETERMINE THE RELATIVE IMPACT OF USING THE EXTRA DATA.