Visible and infrared channels for convective-scale NWP

My first publication investigates the potential benefit of visible and infrared assimilation.

Potential impact of assimilating visible and infrared satellite observations

My first publication investigates the potential benefit of visible and infrared assimilation (my first PhD research goal) relative to radar assimilation for two selected cases. It presents the first study that directly compares the assimilation of visible (0.6 μm), infrared (6.2 and 7.3 μm), and radar (10 cm) observations. Furthermore, it represents the first application of the idealized observing-system simulation experiments (OSSE) setup that was developed during the course of my PhD and contains a detailed description of the setup, i.e., the initial conditions and perturbations, the two cases (weather situations), the observing and the assimilation system. Systematic model and operator errors are excluded to focus on the effectiveness of assimilating nonlinear observations in an Ensemble adjustment Kalman filter (EAKF) without distraction by potential systematic model errors and systematic operator deficiencies. Therefore, the achieved absolute forecast improvement needs to be treated with caution, but the relative impact of different observation types can be expected to be largely transferable to real NWP systems as all of the compared observation types are similarly affected by such systematic errors.

Authors: Lukas Kugler, Jeffrey L. Anderson, Martin Weissmann

First published: 19 September 2023

DOI: 10.1002/qj.4577