Assimilation of Feng-Yun-3B Satellite Microwave Humidity Sounder Data over Land

The ECMWF has been assimilating Feng-Yun-3B （FY-3B） satellite microwave humidity sounder （MWHS） data over ocean in an operational forecasting system since 24 September 2014, It is more difficult, however, to assimilate microwave observations over land and sea ice than over the open ocean due to higher uncertainties in land surface temperature, surface emissivity and less effective cloud screening. We compare approaches in which the emissivity is retrieved dynamically from MWHS channel l [150 GHz （vertical polarization）] with the use of an evolving emissivity atlas from 89 GHz observations from the MWHS onboard NOAA and EUMETSAT satellites. The assimilation of the additional data over land improves the fit of short-range forecasts to other observations, notably ATMS （Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder） humidity channels, and the forecast impacts are mainly neutral to slightly positive over the first five days. The forecast impacts are better in boreal summer and the Southern Hemisphere. These results suggest that the techniques tested allow for effective assimilation of MWHS/FY-3B data over land.

Land Response to Atmosphere at Different Resolutions in the Common Land Model over East Asia

Towards a better understanding of hydrological interactions between the land surface and atmosphere, land surface mod- els are routinely used to simulate hydro-meteorological fluxes. However, there is a lack of observations available for model forcing, to estimate the hydro-meteorological fluxes in East Asia. In this study, Common Land Model （CLM） was used in offline-mode during the summer monsoon period of 2006 in East Asia, with different forcings from Asiaflux, Korea Land Data Assimilation System （KLDAS）, and Global Land Data Assimilation System （GLDAS）, at point and regional scales, separately. The CLM results were compared with observations from Asiaflux sites. The estimated net radiation showed good agreement, with r = 0.99 for the point scale and 0.85 for the regional scale. The estimated sensible and latent heat fluxes using Asiaflux and KLDAS data indicated reasonable agreement, with r = 0.70. The estimated soil moisture and soil temperature showed similar patterns to observations, although the estimated water fluxes using KLDAS showed larger discrepancies than those of Asiaflux because of scale mismatch. The spatial distribution of hydro-meteorological fluxes according to KLDAS for East Asia were compared to the CLM results with GLDAS, and the GLDAS provided online. The spatial distributions of CLM with KLDAS were analogous to CLM with GLDAS, and the standalone GLDAS data. The results indicate that KLDAS is a good potential source of high spatial resolution forcing data. Therefore, the KLDAS is a promising alternative product, capable of compensating for the lack of observations and low resolution grid data for East Asia.

Estimating the Soil Moisture Profile by Assimilating Near-Surface Observations with the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF)

The paper investigates the ability to retrieve the true soil moisture profile by assimilating near-surface soil moisture into a soil moisture model with an ensemble Kalman filter （EnKF） assimilation scheme, including the effect of ensemble size, update interval and nonlinearities in the profile retrieval, the required time for full retrieval of the soil moisture profiles, and the possible influence of the depth of the soil moisture observation. These questions are addressed by a desktop study using synthetic data. The ＂true＂ soil moisture profiles are generated from the soil moisture model under the boundary condition of 0.5 cm d^-1 evaporation. To test the assimilation schemes, the model is initialized with a poor initial guess of the soil moisture profile, and different ensemble sizes are tested showing that an ensemble of 40 members is enough to represent the covariance of the model forecasts. Also compared are the results with those from the direct insertion assimilation scheme, showing that the EnKF is superior to the direct insertion assimilation scheme, for hourly observations, with retrieval of the soil moisture profile being achieved in 16 h as compared to 12 days or more. For daily observations, the true soil moisture profile is achieved in about 15 days with the EnKF, but it is impossible to approximate the true moisture within 18 days by using direct insertion. It is also found that observation depth does not have a significant effect on profile retrieval time for the EnKF. The nonlinearities have some negative influence on the optimal estimates of soil moisture profile but not very seriously.

A Multimodel Ensemble-based Kalman Filter for the Retrieval of Soil Moisture Profiles

With the combination of three land surface models （LSMs） and the ensemble Kalman filter （EnKF）, a multimodel EnKF is proposed in which the multimodel background superensemble error covariance matrix is estimated by two different algorithms： the Simple Model Average （SMA） and the Weighted Average Method （WAM）. The two algorithms are tested and compared in terms of their abilities to retrieve the true soil moisture profile by respectively assimilating both synthetically-generated and actual near-surface soil moisture measurements. The results from the synthetic experiment show that the performances of the SMA and WAM algorithms were quite different. The SMA algorithm did not help to improve the estimates of soil moisture at the deep layers, although its performance was not the worst when compared with the results from the single-model EnKF. On the contrary, the results from the WAM algorithm were better than those from any single-model EnKF. The tested results from assimilating the field measurements show that the performance of the two multimodel EnKF algorithms was very stable compared with the single-model EnKF. Although comparisons could only be made at three shallow layers, on average, the performance of the WAM algorithm was still slightly better than that of the SMA algorithm. As a result, the WAM algorithm should be adopted to approximate the multimodel background superensemble error covariance and hence used to estimate soil moisture states at the relatively deep layers.

Satellite Monitoring of the Surface Water and Energy Budget in the Central Tibetan Plateau

The water and energy cycle in the Tibetan Plateau is an important component of Monsoon Asia and the global energy and water cycle. Using data at a CEOP （Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period）-Tibet site, this study presents a first-order evaluation on the skill of weather forecasting from GCMs and satellites in producing precipitation and radiation estimates. The satellite data, together with the satellite leaf area index, are then integrated into a land data assimilation system （LDAS-UT） to estimate the soil moisture and surface energy budget on the Plateau. The system directly assimilates the satellite microwave brightness temperature, which is strongly affected by soil moisture but not by cloud layers, into a simple biosphere model. A major feature of this system is a dual-pass assimilation technique, which can auto-calibrate model parameters in one pass and estimate the soil moisture and energy budget in the other pass. The system outputs, including soil moisture, surface temperature, surface energy partition, and the Bowen ratio, are compared with observations, land surface models, the Global Land Data Assimilation System, and four general circulation models. The results show that this satellite data-based system has a high potential for a reliable estimation of the regional surface energy budget on the Plateau.

Applicability Assessment of the 1998–2018 CLDAS Multi-Source Precipitation Fusion Dataset over China

Traditional hourly rain gauges and automatic weather stations rarely measure solid precipitation, except for those stations with weighing-type precipitation sensors. Microwave remote sensing has only a low ability to retrieve solid precipitation. In addition, there are no long-term, high-quality precipitation data in China that can be used to drive land surface models. To address these issues, in the China Meteorological Administration(CMA) Land Data Assimilation System(CLDAS), we blended the Climate Prediction Center(CPC) morphing technique(CMORPH) and Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2(MERRA2) precipitation datasets with observed temperature and precipitation data on various temporal scales using multigrid variational analysis and temporal downscaling to produce a multi-source precipitation fusion dataset for China(CLDAS-Prcp). This dataset covers all of China at a resolution of 6.25 km at hourly intervals from 1998 to 2018. We performed dependent and independent evaluations of the CLDAS-Prcp dataset from the perspectives of seasonal total precipitation and land surface model simulation. Our results show that the CLDAS-Prcp dataset represents reasonably the spatial distribution of precipitation in China. The dependent evaluation indicates that the CLDAS-Prcp performs better than the MERRA2 precipitation, CMORPH precipitation, Global Land Data Assimilation System version 2(GLDAS-V2.1) precipitation,and CLDAS-V2.0 winter precipitation, as compared to the meteorological observational precipitation. The independent evaluation indicates that the CLDAS-Prcp dataset performs better than the Global Precipitation Measurement(GPM) precipitation dataset and is similar to the CLDAS-V2.0 summer precipitation dataset based on the hydrological observational precipitation. The simulated soil moisture content driven by CLDAS-Prcp is slightly better than that driven by the CLDAS-V2.0 precipitation, whereas the snow depth simulation driven by CLDAS-Prcp is much better than that driven by the CLDAS-V2.0 precipitation. This is because the CLDAS-Prcp data have included solid precipitation. Overall, the CLDAS-Prcp dataset can meet the needs of land surface and hydrological modeling studies.

卫星观测陆表温度日变化对全球陆面同化系统陆表温度模拟的影响

Based on the Beijing Climate Center’s land surface model BCC_AVIM(Beijing Climate Center Atmosphere-Vegetation Interaction Model),the ensemble Kalman filter(EnKF)algorithm has been used to perform an assimilation experiment on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS)land surface temperature(LST)product to study the influence of satellite LST data frequencies on surface temperature data assimilations.The assimilation results have been independently tested and evaluated by Global Land Data Assimilation System(GLDAS)LST products.The results show that the assimilation scheme can effectively reduce the BCC_AVIM model simulation bias and the assimilation results reflect more reasonable spatial and temporal distributions.Diurnal variation information in the observation data has a significant effect on the assimilation results.Assimilating LST data that contain diurnal variation information can further improve the accuracy of the assimilation analysis.Overall,when assimilation is performed using observation data at 6-hour intervals,a relatively good assimilation result can be obtained,indicated by smaller bias(<2.2K)and root-mean-square-error(RMSE)(<3.7K)and correlation coefficients larger than 0.60.Conversely,the assimilation using 24-hour data generally showed larger bias(>2.2K)and RMSE(>4K).Further analysis showed that the sensitivity of assimilation effect to diurnal variations in LST varies with time and space.The assimilation using observations with a time interval of 3 hours has the smallest bias in Oceania and Africa(both<1K);the use of 24-hour interval observation data for assimilation produces the smallest bias(<2.2K)in March,April and July.