Influence of airborne Doppler wind lidar profiles near Typhoon Sinlaku on ECMWF and NOGAPS forecasts

A set of about 2500 Doppler wind lidar (DWL) profiles was measured by the DLR Falcon aircraft during the life cycle of Typhoon Sinlaku in the western North Pacific as part of the THORPEX Pacific Asian Regional Campaign (T-PARC) 2008. These DWL profiles were assimilated in the global models of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The beneficial impact of DWL observations is demonstrated with data denial experiments of both models and differences of the observation impact on analyses and forecasts are analysed. Additionally, the impact is quantified using the adjoint observation impact calculation. These calculations confirm the beneficial impact of DWL observations. The total relative contribution of DWL observations is about twice as high in the NRL system compared to the ECMWF system, which may be due to the lower number of satellite observations assimilated in the NRL system. In the NRL system, the DWL impact per observation is higher than that of other wind observations, whereas in the ECMWF system the DWL impact per observations is similar to other aircraft observations and lower than that of radiosondes. The results confirm preceding studies assimilating airborne DWL observations in numerical weather prediction models and underline the high expectations for future space-borne DWL instruments. Copyright c � 2011 Royal Meteorological Society

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