Abstract
The baroclinic primitive equation models used for short and medium range weather forecasting admit undesirable high frequency gravity waves as well as the desirable slow-moving Rossby modes. The gravity waves are excited by initial imbalances between the observed mass and wind fields and by inconsistencies between model and atmosphere. The initial separation of the meteorological noise (gravity waves) from the signal has been the long-time goal of model initialization procedures.
Normal mode initialization techniques have been found to be extremely proficient at separating and removing meteorological noise from the initial state. The present review will discuss the development of the technique from first principles and will give examples of successful applications.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation
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Daley, R. (1981). The Normal Mode Approach to the Initialization Problem. In: Bengtsson, L., Ghil, M., Källén, E. (eds) Dynamic Meteorology: Data Assimilation Methods. Applied Mathematical Sciences, vol 36. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5970-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5970-1_3
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