Latency in NUCAPS a problem today

NUCAPS has finally arrived!  While its rather late again (already issued 5 warnings), we did have time to take a quick look at it.  Overall, it did poorly near the surface as expected with dewpoint about 10 degrees too low and temperatures about 15 degrees too low.  This led to very little instability in the sounding.  It also didn't seem to pick up on the better lapse rates in the elevated mixed layer, but did show the drier air between 700 and 500 mb. Thus, some evidence of the elevated mixed layer was there, but lapse rates were not as expected.

NUCAPS  near Indianapolis, IN

NUCAPS experimental near Indianapolis, IN

The experimental sounding did much better capturing the low levels again today, correcting for the temperature and moisture fields.  After modifications, the sounding revealed 4800J/kg of SBCAPE, much more representative based on the SPC meso page.  However, again, this came in even later, so its hard to use operationally.

Now this issues with the latency.  Here is what the radar looked at back at 1900z:

1900z radar

Note the convection is still well north of Indianapolis. Now look to see how things evolved by 2145z, which is when the NUCAPS finally arrived:

So in the time between when the NUCAPS sounding was created until the time we received it in AWIPS, we issued 5 warnings and outflow had already passed through Indianapolis.  Here is a loop of the time between when the NUCAPS was taken before we finally saw the sounding.

Radar loop

This shows the importance of improving the latency to make the sounder data more applicable to operations.  Seeing that experimental NUCAPS in real time would aid in giving confidence in the thrermal profiles that we use for warning operations.  Used in conjunction with model data could help confirm models are handling the thermal  fields well in real time.  However, until latency issue is fixed, it would be hard to use operationally.

-ISU2004