Identification

Title

Assessing the accuracy of a linearized observation operator for assimilation of radio occultation data: Case simulations with a high-resolution weather model

Abstract

Assimilation into numerical weather models of the refractivity, Abel-retrieved from radio occultations, as the local refractivity at ray tangent point may result in large errors in the presence of strong horizontal gradients (atmospheric fronts, strong convection). To reduce these errors, other authors suggested modeling the Abel-retrieved refractivity as a nonlocal linear function of the 3D refractivity, which can be used as a linear observation operator for assimiliation. The authors of this study introduce their approach for the nonlocal linear observation operator, which consists of modeling the excess phase path, calculated along certain trajectories below the top of an atmospheric model. In this study (not aimed at development of an observation operator for any specific atmospheric model), both approaches are validated by assessing the accuracy of both linearized observation operators by numerical simulations with the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and comparing them to the accuracy of interpretation of the Abel-retrieved refractivity as local. Improvement of the accuracy of about an order of magnitude is found with the nonlocal refractivity and further improvement is found with the excess phase path. The effect of horizontal resolution of an atmospheric model on the accuracy of modeling local and nonlocal linear observables is also investigated, and it is demonstrated that the nonlocal linear modeling of radio occultation observables is especially important for weather prediction models with sufficiently high horizontal resolution, grid size <100 km (mesoscale models).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79023zg

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2005-08-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2005 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact