ECMWF study on the impact of future developments of the space-based observing system on Numerical Weather Prediction

Title
ECMWF study on the impact of future developments of the space-based observing system on Numerical Weather Prediction
Technical memorandum
Date Published
12/2010
Secondary Title
ECMWF Technical Memoranda
Number
638
Author
G. Radnóti
Peter Bauer
A. McNally
Carla Cardinali
Sean Healy
Patricia de Rosnay
Publisher
ECMWF
Abstract The subject of this study is the evaluation of the impact of the key components of the space-based observing system on the skill of numerical weather prediction. The main emphasis is put on temperature and humidity sounding from advanced sounders of the AIRS/IASI-type and conventional sounders of the HIRS/AMSU-A/MHS-type, humidity imaging in clear skies and in areas affected by clouds and precipitation, radio-occultation observations to support the estimation of the observation requirements of a radio-occultation observation constellation for the next decade, indirect wind observations (through AMVs) with special focus on polar AMVs and finally new observation types, in particular soil moisture derived from scatterometry (ASCAT). Observations related to clouds and precipitation, in support of radio-occultation constellation definition, and related to soil moisture have never been evaluated in a comparable framework before. The new diagnostic tools of observational influence in the analysis (OIA) and forecast error contribution (FEC) are also applied in this study to complete the findings deriving from the OSEs.
URL https://www.ecmwf.int/en/elibrary/76088-ecmwf-study-impact-future-developments-space-based-observing-system-numerical
DOI 10.21957/skfhvask
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