ABQ - First Look at NUCAPS

2100Z: NOAA-20 has made it's pass over the central US so am taking my first look at NUCAPS soundings (non-corrected version). I like the dots color coded according to sounding data quality & the clickable map it makes it easy to quickly identify the most useful soundings to analyze first, and then I can start checking out some of the yellow ones as needed. Viewing point soundings in AWIPS 2 is cumbersome to put it lightly so the point & click interface is much appreciated. I was also able to look at the all-sky LAP CAPE product for the first time. I really like this product as a "ground truth" for early afternoon CAPE after the morning soundings & to act as a sanity check for RAP/HRRR/etc. forecast soundings. I've used the non-all sky version before in operations & it's really hard to gather much from it with all the data blackouts. The continuity in the all-sky product leads to much easier interpretation & value in operations.

NUCAPS had two "green" sounding locations over the ABQ WFO so I looked at those two first. First thing I noticed was that they were a "little" aggressive when it comes to instability. Below is the NUCAPS sounding from eastern NM.SBCAPE values were close to 4000 J/kg with MLCAPE at least a little bit more realistic at 2270 J/kg. The all-sky CAPE product showed values in the area generally around 1200-1300 J/kg & SPC mesoanalysis had MLCAPE values of 1500-2000 J/kg. Analyzing the NUCAPS sounding the culprit appears to be too high of a sfc dewpoint (59 F vs low 50s F on LAPS) & lapse rates too steep in the mid-levels (850-500 mb of 9.5 C/km). Apparently NUCAPS tends to have a cool & dry bias at the surface so these values are rather surprising to me.

Of course these are the non-corrected soundings so we'll see how the corrected version compare once they arrive. I'm hoping they are closer to reality because I couldn't gain much in operations from the NUCAPS soundings in this case.

Peter Sunday