Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate

该奖项将建立和运作气象学、电离层和气候星座观测系统(COSMIC)的科学数据分析和档案中心。COSMIC是一项为地球科学提供全额资金的卫星任务，将利用遥感、通信技术和计算的最新发展来解决当今一些最重要的地球科学问题。在气象学方面，COSMIC将为各种大气过程研究提供高垂直分辨率的温度、气压和水汽信息，并改善数值天气模式的性能，特别是在极地和海洋地区。对于气候研究和监测，它将提供一个具有无与伦比的长期稳定性的准确的全球温度计。来自COSMIC的对流层上层折射率数据可能会为最近关于热带对流在气候反馈中所起作用的争议提供新的线索。在电离层，宇宙数据将通过为模型测试和初始化提供密集、准确和全球电子密度测量，加快空间天气预报物理模型的发展。对于大地测量学来说，宇宙数据将使重力场比目前的水平提高近一个数量级，对调查北极冰盖质量平衡、海洋测高、板块构造研究以及改进民用和军用卫星的轨道确定具有重要意义。

This award will establish and operate the scientific data analysis and archive center for the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC). COSMIC is a fully funded satellite mission for the Earth Sciences that will make use of recent developments in remote sensing, communications technology, and computing to solve some of the most important geo-scientific issues today. In meteorology, COSMIC will provide high vertical resolution temperature, pressure and water vapor information for a variety of atmospheric process studies and to improve the performance of numerical weathermodels, especially in polar and oceanic regions. For climate research and monitoring it will provide an accurate global thermometer with unequaled long-term stability. Upper-tropospheric refractivity data from COSMIC may shed new light on the recent controversy over te role that tropical convection plays in climate feedback. In the ionosphere, COSMIC data will accelerate the development of physical models for space weather prediction by providing dense, accurate, and global electron desnity measurements for model testing and initialization. For geodesy COSMIC data will improve the gravity field by almost an order of magnitude over the current state of the art, with important implications for investigations of the Anarctic ice sheet mass balance, ocean altimetry, plate tectonic studies, and improved orbit determination of civilian and military satellites.