Topic: NCCF Product Release 1.26-4.2  

Date/Time Issued:  July 31, 2026 2000 UTC

Product(s) or Data Impacted:  GOSAT-GW AMSR3 GRAC, Snow, Precipitation, Sea Ice, Soil, Autosnow, NHC AWIPS Converter, WSF-M L1 BUFR, GOES ASOS SCP, eTRaP, OHC, JPSS IceConcentration and GeoSST products 

Date/Time of Initial Impact: August 26, 2026, TBD UTC 

Date/Time of Expected End: August 26, 2026, TBD UTC

Length of Outage: TBD

Details/Specifics of Change: 

The new GOSAT-GW AMSR3 Snow, Precipitation, Sea Ice and Soil products as well as WSF-M L1 BUFR will be released from PDA OPS on August 26, 2026. The test products are available on PDA I&T now. Users can start subscribing to these data products from PDA I&T. The test data product short names are appended with “_TEST”. The new NHC AWIPS converter products will be disseminated through operational subscription service (OSS).

The existing products, GOSAT-GW AMSR3 GRAC, Autosnow, GOSE ASOS satellite cloud product (SCP), eTRaP, OHC, JPSS IceConcentration and GeoSST, are currently running in NCCF UAT. They will be upgraded, promoted to NCCF PROD and released from PDA OPS on August 19, 2026. Note the detailed information of GeoSST upgrade will be provided soon.

The products included in this release are:

Operational product generation of GOSAT-GW AMSR3 SNOW in NetCDF4 format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

Operational product generation of GOSAT-GW AMSR3 Precipitation in NetCDF4 format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

Operational product generation of GOSAT-GW AMSR3 Sea Ice in NetCDF4 format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

Operational product generation of GOSAT-GW AMSR3 Soil in NetCDF4 format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

The algorithm has undergone a major overhaul, switching from using a physical model (Single Channel Retrieval) to using machine learning models (based on XGBoost). In many respects, this is a different algorithm than the previous delivery.

The algorithm now uses AMSR3 temperature brightness data for input instead of AMSR2 temperature brightness. (Legacy AMSR2 TB input is not currently supported, but could be in the future.)

The algorithm now requires an additional input: the VIIRS global weekly VI product at 4km resolution.

The algorithm utilizes machine learning trained on 4 sub-regions for both ascending and descending passes - i.e. a total of 8 models.

Operational product generation of WSF-M L1 BUFR in BUFR format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

Operational product generation of AWIPS Converter for NHC in NetCDF4 format:

Impact on users: No

OSS product file name changes: New Product

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: New products.

Operational product upgrade of GOSAT-GW AMSR3 GRAC in NetCDF format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: No

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: Split multi-orbital files to single orbital files and handle filled values properly without dropping orbits.

Operational product upgrade of AUTOSNOW in NetCDF and GRIB formats:

Impact on users:  No

PDA product file name changes:  No

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes:  GOSAT-GW AMSR3 MBT is added to the MW  snow and ice retrieval inputs.

Operational product upgrade of GOES ASOS SCP in ASCII format:

Impact on users: 

PDA product file name changes: YES

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: Stations situated along the periphery of the ABI observation area (large satellite zenith angle) are removed.

Operational product upgrade of Blended eTRaP in NetCDF format:

Impact on users: No

PDA product file name changes: New product ( for AMSR3 TRaP only)

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes:  GOSAT_GW AMSR3 capability is added to TRaP and eTRaP processing

Operational product upgrade of OHC in NetCDF format:

Impact on users: 

PDA product file name changes: None

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: None. Blended SST input is now generated on the NCCF.

Operational product upgrade of JPSS IceConcentration in NetCDF format:

Impact on users:  No

PDA product file name changes: No

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: Switch to the AMSR3 Sea Ice product as the input via a temporary TPRS workaround to prevent product degradation after AMSR2 data ends on September 1, 2026.

Operational product upgrade of GeoSST in NetCDF format (detailed information will be provided soon):

Impact on users: 

PDA product file name changes: 

List of product files:

List of Scientific Changes: 

Please note: This upgrade will not be performed during Critical Weather Day (CWD).

Also, the contents of this release are subject to change based on user readiness, customer feedback, and management approval.

Additional ESPC notifications will provide further details and updates concerning this release.  User feedback and questions should be directed to Aiwu Li (aiwu.li@noaa.gov),  Liqun Ma (liqun.ma@noaa.gov), Hongming Qi (hongming.qi@noaa.gov), Changyi Tan (changyi.tan@noaa.gov), David Donahue (david.r.donahue@noaa.gov) and  Sheekela Baker-Yeboah (sheekela.baker-yeboah@noaa.gov). Contact Information: For information on the status of this work, please contact the individual PAL or Please email User Services at spsd.userservices@noaa.gov

Contact Information for Further Information: Please email User Services at spsd.userservices@noaa.gov

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