# NLDAS/JCSDA Teleconference Minutes, Oct-18-2005

## NLDAS

**[VIC (Justin Shepherd)]{.underline}**

VIC is ported to tempest and under testing. This code is the Princeton
in-house version.

**[Mosaic (Brian Cosgrove)]{.underline}**

A LIS version of Mosaic code should be ported to tempest soon.

**[SAC (John Schaake is not available this time)]{.underline}**

**[Noah (Ken Mitchell)]{.underline}**

The NCEP version of NLDAS/Noah is executing on tempest. A LIS version of
NLDAS/Noah will be ported to tempest and do a benchmark comparison
(Helin Wei and Jesse Meng).

**[GOES solar radiation (Rachel Pinker)]{.underline}**

Previously it was suggested that the GOES solar radiation product
suffered from calibration issues during the switch from GOES-8 to
GOES-12 on 01Apr, 2003. Hence, we incline not to use the GOES radiation
for the period from 01Apr to 31Aug, 2003. However, Rachel recently
suggested that the GOES radiation is still good during the above period.
Further investigation is needed.

## 

## JCSDA

**[MODIS Land parameters (Mark Friedl)]{.underline}**

The MODIS-based land surface snow free albedo has been delivered to
JCSDA. This data is a 5-year composite (2000-2004), monthly climatology,
including direct and diffuse albedo for the visible, near-IR, and
broadband shortwave spectra. The data, documentation, and decode
software will be available for users. The resolution is 5km for current
product and might have a 1km potential if desired. Since the product is
a 5-year composite monthly mean, users suggested also providing
information on the variability, e.g., max/min for each month/day over
the 5-year period.

**[CRTM and new land product (George Gayno)]{.underline}**

CRTM beta version code will be available in about 2 weeks.

An ftp host will be set up soon for users to download the new land
products developed by the JCSDA land PI's, i.e., MODIS snow free albedo,
maxima snow albedo, greenness, etc.

**[Forward model with snow (Eric Wood)]{.underline}**

Forward model for snow emission is applied to field data from the NASA
CLPX project (Cold Land Process Experiments, Paul Houser) in Colorado.
The forward model is linked to a high resolution process based snow
model and used the CLPX data for validation study and understand the
possible parameterization required. The goal is trying to transfer the
parameterization to land models like Noah that do not have such
functionality. Preliminary results were presented at the GEWEX meeting
(June 2005). In a multi-layer snow model, longer wavelength emission is
only from the deeper layers of a snowpack and the model estimates the
emission amount at a given wavelength/frequency coming from each layer
to the top of snowpack. The layers can provide better information on the
brightness temperature measured from satellite at a given frequency.
Currently, 20-30 layers are used in the model. CLPX data is available
within a few weeks. AMSR-E data is available in about 2 months.
Basically the simulation gives about twice snowpack than observations.
The assimilation with AMSR-E data cuts the difference by about 40% at
the end of a two-month simulation.

**[Maximum snow albedo (Mike Barlage)]{.underline}**

The MODIS-based land surface maximum snow albedo is delivered to JCSDA
and published in GRL. Another paper that compares the MODIS albedo with
ISCCP data is submitted. Besides, the MODIS vegetation class is
implemented in Noah and also a paper is submitted. The Arizona group
plans to work on snow assimilation in GFS/Noah and WRF/Noah. Ken
Mitchell notes that NCAR has a public repository for WRF/Noah and
tutorial (WRF 2.0). For greenness, it was suggested that the NCEP/Noah
wintertime greenness fraction seems to be low for areas of needleleaf
coverage, e.g., analysis of newly derived MODIS greenness data shows
about 0.75 where the current data Noah uses is only about 0.15. Further
effort is underway and expected to be reported in the next telecon.

**[ATDD observations (Tim Wilson)]{.underline}**

Soil moisture profile measurement is added to the 10 ATDD sites over
CONUS. Data should be available in about two months from now.

**[AFWA (John Eylander)]{.underline}**

AFWA and NASA are working on a shared resource center and looking
forward to include data product from multi-institutes. Currently, AFWA
AGRMET runs on 48 km resolution globally and plans to run at 24 km in
mid-2006. A coupled LIS-AGRMET-Noah-WRF is also in plan.

**[DATA (Ken Mitchell)]{.underline}**

The following newly developed product by JCSDA land PI's will be
available soon:

-   Monthly snow free albedo

-   Maximum snow albedo

-   Land cover class in both UMD and SiB classifications

-   Weekly greenness fraction (NESDIS)

The possibility of releasing the greenness fraction derived by U Arizona
will be in discussion.

**[LIS (Christa Peters-Lidard)]{.underline}**

LIS is looking forward to implementing the new JCSDA products and CRTM.
Collaboration is welcome. For NLDAS, currently 3 out of the 4 models can
run within LIS: Noah, VIC, and MOSAIC. SAC will be also included soon.