Data Assimilation Meetings at Reading
| Date | Meeting type | Speakers |
| 18 Jan 2012 | DARC seminar |
Ed Pavelin (Met Office) Assimilation of hyperspectral sounder radiances in NWP Infrared sounders with high spectral resolution - so-called "hyperspectral" sounders - are an exceptionally rich source of information for NWP models. By measuring thermal infrared radiation in thousands of narrow bands these instruments provide information on the temperature and humidity structure of the atmosphere, trace gas concentrations, cloud properties and surface characteristics. However, this wealth of information also presents major challenges for data assimilation. Most significant are issues related to fast radiative transfer modelling, non-linearity of the observation operator, and the representation of observation and background errors. For these reasons, operational NWP systems do not currently fully exploit the data available from these instruments, and improving the use of hyperspectral sounder data is an area of active research. This talk will give an outline of some of the main areas of research in hyperspectral data assimilation: the assimilation of cloud-affected radiances, the assimilation of observations sensitive to the land surface, the representation of inter-channel error correlations, and better exploitation of high-vertical resolution information. Recent progress in these areas at the Met Office will be presented, as well as an overview of some of the challenges that still lie ahead. |