Impact of Scatterometer Surface Wind Data in the ECMWF Coupled Assimilation System

AbstractThe European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has developed a coupled assimilation system that ingests simultaneously ocean and atmospheric observations in a coupled ocean–atmosphere model. Employing the coupled model constraint in the analysis implies that assimilation of an ocean observation has immediate impact on the atmospheric state estimate, and, conversely, assimilation of an atmospheric observation affects the ocean state. In this context, observing system experiments have been carried out withholding scatterometer surface wind data over the period September–November 2013. Impacts in the coupled assimilation system have been compared to the uncoupled approach used in ECMWF operations where atmospheric and ocean analyses are computed sequentially. The assimilation of scatterometer data has reduced the background surface wind root-mean-square error in the coupled and uncoupled assimilation systems by 3.7% and 2.5%, respectively. It has been found that the ocean temperature ...

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