The 8th EnKF Data Assimilation Workshop




Is 30-second update fast enough for convection-resolving data assimilation?

Takemasa Miyoshi; J. Ruiz; G.-Y. Lien; T. Teramura; Y. Maejima; K. Kondo; H. Sakamoto
RIKEN


Talk: takemasa_20180507.pptx

For local severe weather forecasting at 100-m resolution with 30-minute lead time, we have been working on the “Big Data Assimilation” (BDA) effort for super-rapid 30-second cycle of an ensemble Kalman filter. We have presented two papers with the concept and case studies (Miyoshi et al. 2016, BAMS; Proceedings of the IEEE). Since then, we have performed more experiments in multiple torrential rain cases, and all showed promising results. We were hoping that we could assume the Gaussian error distribution in 30-second forecasts before strong nonlinear dynamics distort the error distribution for rapidly-changing convective storms. However, using 1000 ensemble members, the reduced-resolution version of the BDA system at 1-km grid spacing with 30-second updates showed ubiquity of highly non-Gaussian PDF associated with convective activities. Although our results so far with multiple case studies were quite successful, this gives us a doubt about our Gaussian assumption even if the data assimilation interval is short enough compared with the system’s chaotic time scale. We therefore pose a question if the 30-second update is fast enough for convection-resolving data assimilation under the Gaussian assumption. To answer this question, we aim to gain combined knowledge from BDA case studies with different cycle intervals, 1000-member experiments with 1-km grid spacing, 4D-EnKF experiments with different window lengths, and toy-model experiments with dense and frequent observations. In this presentation, we will show the most up-to-date results of the BDA research, and will discuss about the question if the 30-second update is fast enough for convective-scale data assimilation.