COSP

To facilitate the exploitation of A Train satellite data in numerical models, we continue to develop a system called COSP that allows to simulate the signal that these satellites would see in a model-generated world. It is a flexible tool to simulate active instruments in models (climate, forecast, cloud-resolving). Satellites with simulators included in the tool include: CloudSat, CALIPSO, ISCCP, MISR, MODIS.

There are several groups involved in the project:

• Met Office Hadley Centre

• LMD/IPSL (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace)

• LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

• CSU (Colorado State University)

• UW (University of Washington)

• CU/CIRES (University of Colorado/Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences)

The approach is to create a modular code in FORTRAN90 that can be plugged in different types of models, from global climate models to cloud resolving models. More details are in the 2011 COSP description paper led by Alejandro Bodas-Salcedo in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and 2018 COSP2 description paper led by Dustin Swales in Geophysical Model Development.

Questions? Contact CFMIP co-chair Alejandro Bodas-Salcedo alejandro.bodas(at)metoffice.gov.uk.

News

• Use of COSP2.0 in CFMIP3/CMIP6
  Version 2 of the COSP software has been released for CFMIP3/CMIP6 experiments.  The code is available on Github. posted by Masa Watanabe, 8th November, 2017

• COSP code moved to Github and release of COSP v1.4.1
  COSP1.4.1 is a modest update to COSP1.4 that includes changes enabling new diagnostics requested by CFMIP3/CMIP6, most notably joint histograms of particle size and optical thickness from the MODIS simulator. The code is available on Github. Modeling centers are encouraged to update to COSP 1.4.1 to provide these new diagnostics but may provide results from COSP 1.4. Note that the MODIS simulator now produces particle size estimates consistent with retrievals using 3.7 micron measurements, consistent with NASA processing of the underlying data for MODIS “Collection 6.” posted by Alejandro Bodas-Salcedo, January 2017

The CFMIP COSP page before January 2017 is available here.