Abstract
Data assimilation systems usually assume that the observation errors of wind components, i.e., u (the longitudinal component) and v (the latitudinal component), are uncorrelated. However, since wind components are derived from observations in the form of wind speed and direction (spd and dir), the observation errors of u and v are correlated. In this paper, an explicit expression of the observation errors and correlation for each pair of wind components are derived based on the law of error propagation. The new data assimilation scheme considering the correlated error of wind components is implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting Data Assimilation (WRFDA) system. Besides, adaptive quality control (QC) is introduced to retain the information of high wind-speed observations. Results from real data experiments assimilating the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) sea surface winds suggest that analyses from the new data assimilation scheme are more reasonable compared to those from the conventional one, and could improve the forecasting of Typhoon Noru.
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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41675097 and 41375113) and Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province (ZDYF2017167).
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Duan, B., Zhang, W., Yang, X. et al. Assimilation of ASCAT Sea Surface Wind Retrievals with Correlated Observation Errors. J Meteorol Res 35, 478–489 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13351-021-1007-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13351-021-1007-0