ASSIMILATION OF ALTIMETER WIND DATA IN MESOSCALE NUMERICAL MODEL (MM5)

Making use of altimeter wind data and standard sounding data in a mesoscale numerical model of PSU/NCAR (MM5), we test four-dimensional data assimilation scheme based on nudging. The purpose of this paper is to determine what meteorological fields and what assimilation method have positive effect on typhoon sea surface wind by simulating two typhoon cases in MM5. We perform seven experiments for 9608 Typhoon (Case 1): one control experiment, three analysis nudging experiments, two observation nudging experiments and one analysis and observation nudging experiment; we perform one control experiment and one analysis nudging experiment for 9711 Typhoon (Case 2). The results show assimilating wind-thermal fields can effectively improve simulation accuracy of the model; the experiment combining standard sounding data and surface observations can improve greatly the simulation accuracy of the model; the altimeter data contain lots of sea surface information and also have positive impact on typhoon sea surface wind.