Introduction to Data Assimilation and Applications to Atmospheric Data Analysis

Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences McGill University
Author: Pierre Gauthier

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Table of contents

  • 195-616B Topics in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences McGill University

  • Prerequisites
  • Nature of the observations and their use
  • Observations used in the operational data assimilation system of the Canadian Meteorological Centre
  • Data coverage for radiosondes at 00 UTC and 12 UTC
  • Aircraft data (AMDAR)
  • Surface and ship data coverage (SYNOP)
  • Buoys (fixed and drifting)
  • Observation usage at CMC: satellite data
  • Horizontal coverage of ATOVS radiance data (over 6-h)
  • Wind data derived from cloud motion (SATOB, SATWINDS)
  • Estimation problem
  • History of assimilation methods
  • Schematics of the method of direct insertion
  • Difficulties of data assimilation
  • Statistical estimation: univariate case
  • Best Linear Unbiased Estimate (BLUE)
  • Statistical interpolation (or Gauss-Markov method) (Gandin, 1963; Rutherford, 1973; Schlatter,1977; Daley, 1991)
  • Diapositive PPT
  • Wind and geopotential analysis corrections obtained in response to a single observation of the zonal wind component located at 265 hPa in the Northern extra-Tropics (45N-60W) (Gauthier et al., 1998)
  • Observation operators
  • Data assimilation cycle
  • Diapositive PPT
  • 4D variational data assimilation (4D-Var)
  • Advantages of the temporal dimension
  • Other formulations
  • Applications of data assimilation
  • Diapositive PPT
  • Other references