The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the hyperspectral infrared sounder on the NASA Aqua mission, both improves operational weather prediction and provides high-quality research data for climate studies. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), and its two companion microwave instruments, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), form the integrated atmospheric sounding system flying on the Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua spacecraft since its launch in May 2002.1 The primary scientific achievement of AIRS has been to improve weather prediction (Le Marshall et al. 2005a,b,c) and to study the water and energy cycle (Tian et al. 2006). AIRS also provides information on several greenhouse gases. The measurement goal of AIRS is the retrieval of temperature and precipitable-water vapor profiles with accuracies approaching those of conventional radiosondes. In the following text we use the terms AIRS and AIRS-AMSU-HSB interchangeably.1 The HSB ceased functioning after 5 February 2003. This did not have an impact on the accuracy, coverage, or resolution of the AIRS core data product, but its loss has had a significant impact on AIRS research products.A comprehensive set of articles on AIRS and AMSU design details, prelaunch calibration, and prelaunch retrieval performance expectations were published in a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (2003, vol. 41, no. 2). This paper discusses the performance of AIRS and examines how it is meeting its operational and research objectives based on the experience of more than 2 yr with AIRS data. We describe the science background and the performance of AIRS in terms of the accuracy and stability of its observed spectral radiances. We examine the validation of the retrieved temperature and water vapor profiles against collocated operational radiosondes, and then we assess the impact thereof on numerical weather forecasting of the assimilation of the AIRS spectra and the retrieved temperature. We close the paper with a discussion on the retrieval of several minor tropospheric constituents from AIRS spectra.

T he NASA Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS), the first of the new generation of meteorological advanced sounders for operational and research use, is part of a large international investment to upgrade the operational meteorological satellite systems. The new systems include the NOAA Crosstrack Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and the Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES) instruments, on U.S. operational polar-orbiting and geostationary platforms, respectively, and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding TABLE I. The characteristics of the AIRS and current operational HIRS sounding instruments. Instrument HIRS AIRS Spectral range 3.7-15 pm 3.7-15 JL/M Spatial resolution 17.4-km subsatellite 13.5-km subsatellite Number of channels 20 2378 A XIX-1/70-1/1200 Vertical resolution-3 km-1 km Temperature accuracy ~ 1.5-2 K 1 K accuracy in I-km layers Moisture accuracy-30%

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The Magellan Echellette (MagE) spectrograph is a single-object optical echellette spectrograph for the Magellan Clay telescope. MagE has been designed to have high throughput in the blue; the peak throughput is 22% at 5600 Å including the telescope. The wavelength coverage includes the entire optical window (3100 Å -1 µm). The spectral resolution for a 1" slit is R~4100. MagE is a very simple spectrograph with only four moving parts, prism cross-dispersion, and a vacuum Schmidt camera. The instrument saw first light in November 2007 and is now routinely taking science observations.

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NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense use common infrastructure and directed research to address the research-to-operations problem for satellite data assimilation. The Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2001, with the Department of Defense (DoD) agencies becoming partners in 2002. The goal of JCSDA is to accelerate the use of observations from Earth-orbiting satellites in operational environmental analysis and prediction models for the purpose of improving weather forecasts, improving seasonalto-interannual climate forecasts, and increasing the accuracy of climate datasets. Advanced instruments of the current and planned satellite missions do and will increasingly provide large volumes of data related to the atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface states. During this decade, the plan will result in a five order

Atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) have been generated continuously from Multifunctional Transport Satellite 1 Replacement (MTSAT-1R) radiance data (imagery) since 2005, and more recently from MTSAT-2, which are operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). These are the primary geostationary meteorological satellites observing the western Pacific, Asia, and the Australian region. The vectors are used operationally, for analysis in the Darwin Regional Forecast Office. The near-continuous AMVs have been stringently error characterized and used in near-real-time trials to gauge their impact on operational regional numerical weather prediction (NWP), using four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4DVAR). The use of these locally generated hourly vectors (the only hourly AMV source in the region at the time) and 4DVAR has resulted in both improved temporal and spatial data coverage in the operational regional forecast domain. The beneficial impact of these data on the Bureau of Meteorology's (Bureau's) current operational system is described. After these trials, the hourly MTSAT AMVs were introduced into the Bureau's National Meteorological and Oceanographic Centre's (NMOC) operational NWP suite for use by the operational Australian Community Climate Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) regional and global models, ACCESS-R and ACCESS-G, respectively. Examples of their positive impact on both midlatitude and tropical cyclone forecasts are presented.