Ensemble Kalman Filter Assimilation of Doppler Radar Data

Ensemble Kalman Filter Assimilation of Doppler Radar Data with a CompressibleNonhydrostatic Model: OSS Experiments

MINGJING TONG AND MING XUE

School of Meteorology and Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

(Manuscript received 8 June 2004, in final form 20 September 2004)

ABSTRACT

A Doppler radar data assimilation system is developed based on an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF)method and tested with simulated radar data from a supercell storm. As a first implementation, it is assumedthat the forward models are perfect and that the radar data are sampled at the analysis grid points. Ageneral purpose nonhydrostatic compressible model is used with the inclusion of complex multiclass icemicrophysics. New aspects of this study compared to previous work include the demonstration of the abilityof the EnKF method to retrieve multiple microphysical species associated with a multiclass ice microphysicsscheme, and to accurately retrieve the wind and thermodynamic variables. Also new are the inclusion ofreflectivity observations and the determination of the relative role of the radial velocity and reflectivity dataas well as their spatial coverage in recovering the full-flow and cloud fields. In general, the system is ableto reestablish the model storm extremely well after a number of assimilation cycles, and best results areobtained when both radial velocity and reflectivity data, including reflectivity information outside of theprecipitation regions, are used. Significant positive impact of the reflectivity assimilation is found eventhough the observation operator involved is nonlinear. The results also show that a compressible model thatcontains acoustic modes, hence the associated error growth, performs at least as well as an anelastic modelused in previous EnKF studies at the cloud scale.

Flow-dependent and dynamically consistent background error covariances estimated from the forecastensemble play a critical role in successful assimilation and retrieval. When the assimilation cycles start fromrandom initial perturbations, better results are obtained when the updating of the fields that are not directlyrelated to radar reflectivity is withheld during the first few cycles. In fact, during the first few cycles, theupdating of the variables indirectly related to reflectivity hurts the analysis. This is so because the estimatedbackground covariances are unreliable at this stage of the data assimilation process, which is related to theway the forecast ensemble is initialized. Forecasts of supercell storms starting from the best-assimilatedinitial conditions are shown to remain very good for at least 2 h.

1. Introduction

Since its introduction by Evensen (1994), the en-semble Kalman filter (EnKF) technique for data as-similation has received much attention. A rapidly in-creasing number of studies are appearing that examineits performance for various applications. In the fieldof meteorology, EnKF was first applied to large-scaledata assimilation problems and observations aretreated as random variables that are subject to pertur-bations (Evensen 1994; Burgers et al. 1998; Houteka-mer and Mitchell 1998; Houtekamer 2001; Evensen2003). Deterministic methods were developed more re-cently to avoid sampling errors associated with the useof perturbed observations or to address the adaptiveobservational network design problem; these methods

include the ensemble square-root filter (EnSRF;Whitaker and Hamill 2002; Tippett et al. 2003), theensemble adjustment filter (Anderson 2001), and theensemble transform Kalman filter (Bishop et al. 2001),which all belong to the broader class of square-rootfilters (Tippett et al. 2003).

In general, EnKF and related methods are designedto simplify or make possible the computation of flow-dependent error statistics. Rather than solving theequation for the time evolution of the probability den-sity function of the model state, EnKF methods applythe Monte Carlo method to estimate the forecast errorstatistics. A large ensemble of model states are inte-grated forward in time using the dynamic equations; themoments of the probability density function are thencalculated from this ensemble for different times(Evensen 2003).

In recent years, various techniques have been devel-oped for analyzing and retrieving the atmosphericstate at the convective scale from Doppler radar data.These methods range from purely kinematic to the so-

Corresponding author address: Dr. Ming Xue, School of Me-teorology, University of Oklahoma, SEC 1310, 100 E. Boyd, Nor-man, OK 73019.E-mail: [email protected]

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phisticated 4D variational data assimilation method(4DVAR), which employs a nonhydrostatic predictionmodel and its adjoint (e.g., Gal-Chen 1978; Sun et al.1991; Qiu and Xu 1992; Shapiro et al. 1995; Sun andCrook 1997; Gao et al. 1999; Wu et al. 2000; Weygandtet al. 2002). Most of the work deals with the retrievaland assimilation of radial velocity and/or reflectivitydata from single-Doppler radar because dual- or mul-tiple-Doppler coverage is not generally available. Forthe purpose of initializing NWP models, the 4DVARmethod (e.g., Sun and Crook 1997; Gao et al. 1998)promises to provide an initial condition that is consis-tent with the prediction model and is able to effectivelyuse multiple volume scans from a radar. However, thehigh cost of developing and maintaining an adjointcode, especially one that can run efficiently on distrib-uted-memory parallel computer systems, and the needto include in the adjoint detailed physical processes thatare more important at the convective scales have lim-ited 4DVAR assimilations of Doppler radar and otherhigh-resolution data to relatively simple applicationsand model settings.

Very recently, EnKF was applied to the assimilationof simulated Doppler radar data for a modeled convec-tive storm (Snyder and Zhang 2003; Zhang et al. 2004)and of real radar data (Dowell et al. 2004). Very en-couraging results are obtained in these studies in re-trieving wind, temperature, and moisture field data forconvective storms. The first two studies assimilatedonly radial velocity data, while in Dowell et al. (2004),the use of reflectivity data is limited to the update of therainwater mixing ratio only. Neither of these studiesincluded ice microphysics processes, and the assimila-tion system was based on an anelastic cloud model. Awarm-rain microphysics scheme is also used in all of theaforementioned 4DVAR studies except for Wu et al.(2000) in which a simplified ice microphysics schemewas used. Dual-polarization radar data were assimi-lated by Wu et al. (2000) by first deriving hydrometeormixing ratios from regular and differential reflectivities.

Because of the need to run an ensemble of the fore-cast and analysis of nontrivial sizes (usually a few tensto a few hundreds runs), the overall computational costof ensemble-based assimilation methods is also signifi-cant. Fortunately, a sizeable portion of the assimilationprocedure, including the forecast components, is easilyparallelizable. There is no need, in general, for the ad-joint of the forward observation operators, thereforeindirect observations with complex observation opera-tors, at least those that involve primarily local influ-ences, can be easily included. Furthermore, the analysiscode is more or less independent of the predictionmodel, which is just the opposite of the 4DVARmethod. In addition, the system provides valuable un-certainty information on both analysis and forecast, andwhen combined with an existing ensemble predictionsystem, the incremental cost can be small.

The EnKF method is, however, not as mature as

4DVAR. No ensemble Kalman filter assimilation sys-tem has been implemented so far for operational use;EnKF also shares some common problems with4DVAR, including issues with model errors, linear as-sumption associated with the optimality of solution,and the Gaussian error assumption. For observations,such as the integrated total water along the slant pathsof global positioning system (GPS) data, the data influ-ence region tends to be nonlocal. In such a case, thecovariance localization will have to be done around theentire slant path instead of around local observationpoints. Additional issues may arise in such cases, withcost being one. For systems that involve error growth atvery different temporal and spatial scales, more diffi-culties may arise. For these reasons, much research isstill needed before reliable operational implementa-tions of ensemble-based assimilation methods can beachieved. More recently, work has been done in com-paring the relative performance of the 4DVAR andEnKF methods when assimilating Doppler radar data(Crook et al. 2002; Dowell et al. 2002; Caya et al. 2005,hereafter CSS).

In this study, we report on the development of anEnKF system based on a general purpose compressiblenonhydrostatic model, and on the application of thesystem to the assimilation of the simulated radial ve-locity and/or reflectivity data from a single Dopplerradar. The forecast model employs a complex multi-class ice microphysics scheme. The performance of theEnKF scheme in “recovering” the complete state of themodel thunderstorms, including wind, temperature,pressure, and all water and ice fields, is examined. Therelative impact of radial velocity and reflectivity data aswell as their spatial coverage on the analysis are alsoinvestigated. The use of a compressible model, the in-clusion of three-category ice microphysics in addition tothe liquid water species, and the retrieval of multiplemicrophysics species with and without reflectivity dataare aspects that are new compared to previous studies.

Even though we also performed experiments usingan ensemble square-root filter, we report here only re-sults using the perturbed observation method. The restof the paper is outlined as follows. In section 2, wedescribe our EnKF assimilation system and the designof our observing system simulation (OSS) experiments.In section 3 we present the experiment results. Theimpact of various analyses on the forecast is discussedin section 4. A concluding section is given at the end ofthe paper.

2. Assimilation system and experimental design

a. The prediction model and truth simulation

In this study, we test our EnKF assimilation systemusing simulated data from a classic supercell storm casethat occurred on 20 May 1977 in Del City, Oklahoma

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(Ray et al. 1981). Such simulation experiments are com-monly referred to as observing system simulation ex-periments (OSSEs; see, e.g., Lord et al. 1997). The fore-cast model used is the Advanced Regional PredictionSystem (ARPS; Xue et al. 2000, 2001, 2003). In thisstudy, the ARPS model is used in a 3D cloud modelmode and the prognostic variables include three veloc-ity components, u, �, w; potential temperature, �; pres-sure, p; and six categories of water substances: watervapor specific humidity, qv; and mixing ratios for cloudwater, qc; rainwater, qr; cloud ice, qi; snow, qs; and hail,qh. In addition, turbulence kinetic energy is also pre-dicted, which is used to determine turbulent mixing co-efficients based on a 1.5-order turbulence closurescheme. The microphysical processes are parameter-ized using the three-category ice scheme of Lin et al.(1983) and its implementation follows Tao and Simpson(1993). More details on the model can be found in Xueet al. (2000, 2001).

For all experiments, the physical domain is 64 km �64 km � 16 km. The model grid comprises 35 � 35 �35 grid points (including points that facilitate the speci-fication of boundary conditions), with grid intervals of2 km in the horizontal directions and 0.5 km in thevertical. The truth simulation or nature run is initializedfrom a modified real sounding as used in Xue et al.(2001). The CAPE of the sounding is about 3300 J kg�1.A 4-K ellipsoidal thermal bubble centered at x � 48,y � 16, and z � 1.5 km, with radii of 10 km in the x andy directions and 1.5 km in the z direction is used toinitiate the storm. Open conditions are used at the lat-eral boundaries. A wave radiation condition is also ap-plied at the top boundary. Free-slip conditions are ap-plied to the bottom boundary. The length of simulationis up to 3 h. A constant wind of u � 3 m s�1 and � � 14m s�1 is subtracted from the observed sounding to keepthe primary storm cell near the center of the modelgrid. Despite the differences in resolutions, the evolu-tion of the simulated storms is very similar to thosedocumented in Xue et al. (2001).

During the truth simulation, the initial convectivecell strengthens over the first 20 min. The strength ofthe cell then decreases over the next 30 min or so, whichis associated with the splitting of the cell into two ataround 55 min (Fig. 1). The right-moving (relative tothe storm motion vector, which is toward the north-northeast) cell tends to dominate the system; the up-draft reaches a peak value of 44 m s�1 at 90 min. Theleft-moving cell starts to split again at 95 min. The ini-tial cloud started to form at about 10 min, and rainwaterformed at about 15 min. Ice-phase fields appeared atabout 20 min.

b. Simulation of radar observations

As a first implementation, we assume that the simu-lated observations are available on the scalar gridpoints. Future work will assume the availability of data

in the radar coordinates.The simulated radial velocity,Vr, is calculated from

Vr � u cos� sin� � � cos� cos� � w sin�

� a random error, �1�

where is the elevation angle and the azimuth angleof radar beams, and u, �, and w are the model-simulatedvelocities interpolated to the scalar points of the stag-gered model grid. The random error is drawn from anormal distribution with zero mean and a standard de-viation of 1 m s�1. Since Vr is sampled directly fromvelocity fields, the effect of hydrometeor sedimentationdoes not come into play.

The simulated logarithmic reflectivity factor (re-ferred to simply as reflectivity in most parts of this pa-per; in dBZ) is estimated from the following equations:

Z � 10 log10� Ze

1 mm6 m�3� � a random error. �2�

The equivalent reflectivity factor, Ze, is made up ofthree components,

Ze � Zer � Zes � Zeh, �3�

where Zer, Zes, and Zeh are contributions from rainwa-ter, snow, and hail. The random error is drawn from anormal distribution with zero mean and standard de-viation of 5 dB. Reflectivity relations corresponding tothe 10-cm wavelength of the Weather Surveillance Ra-dar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88Ds) are given below andused in our experiments.

The rain component of the reflectivity is calculated,based on Smith et al. (1975), from

Zer �1018 � 720��qr�

1.75

�1.75Nr0.75�r

1.75 , �4�

where �r � 1000 kg m�3 is the density of rainwater and� (in kg m�3) is the density of air; Nr � 8.0 � 106 m�4

is the intercept parameter in the assumed Marshall–Palmer exponential raindrop size distribution.

If the temperature is less than 0°C, then the compo-nent of the reflectivity is, for dry snow,

Zes �1018 � 720Ki

2�s0.25��qs�

1.75

�1.75Kr2Ns

0.75�i2 . �5�

Here �s � 100 kg m�3 is the density of snow and �i �917 kg m�3 the density of ice, Ns � 3.0 � 106 m�4 is theintercept parameter for snow, and K2

i � 0.176 is thedielectric factor for ice while K2

r � 0.93 is the same forwater. Wet snow, which occurs at temperatures higherthan 0°C, is treated in a similar way as rainwater, andthe equivalent reflectivity factor-mixing ratio relation is

Zes �1018 � 720��qs�

1.75

�1.75Ns0.75�s

1.75 . �6�

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For hail, the wet hail formulation of Smith et al.(1975) is used:

Zeh � � 1018 � 720

�1.75Nh0.75�h

1.75�0.95

��qh�1.6625, �7�

where �h � 913 kg m�3 is the density of hail. The hailintercept parameter of Nh � 4.0 � 104 m�4 is used,which is slightly larger than that used in Smith et al.(1975), implying more occurrences of hail at smallersizes. The same value is used in the ARPS implemen-tation of the Lin et al. (1983) microphysics scheme.

Note that SI units are used in all equations above. Re-lations similar to the above are used in, for example,Ferrier (1994). The above equations define the obser-vation operator denoted as H in the following section.When creating simulated observations for our OSS ex-periments, we impose a lower limit of 1 mm6 m�3 on theequivalent reflectivity factor to yield a lower limit of 0dBZ for the logarithmic reflectivity factor.

The ground-based radar is located at the southwestcorner of the computational domain, that is, at the ori-gin of the x–y coordinates (cf. Fig. 1). For data samplingand assimilation, we assume that the observation op-

FIG. 1. Vertical velocity (contours and shading at intervals of 4 m s�1) and horizontal wind (vectors,plotted every other grid point; m s�1), at level z � 6 km: (a)–(d) truth simulation; and analyses from(e)–(h) VrP, (i)–(l) ZP, (m)–(p) VrZPc, and (q)–(t) VrPZF, at t � 40, 60, 80, and 100 min during theassimilation period.


erators, given by the above equations, are perfect. Aswith most atmospheric data assimilation systems, theprediction model is also assumed to be perfect; thatis, no model error is explicitly taken into account. Itis worth noting here that observation operators for re-flectivity factors are nonlinear and because of that theerror distribution of the reflectivity data is likely non-Gaussian. Discussions on the non-Gaussian nature oferror distributions associated with nonlinear observa-tion operators can be found in, for example, Lorenc(2003). One of the goals of this study is to assess theeffectiveness of such data given these characteristicsthat violate the basic assumptions used in deriving theoptimal EnKF solution.

c. The EnKF data assimilation procedure

Our EnKF implementation is primarily based on thealgorithm described by Evensen (1994), Burgers et al.(1998), and Houtekamer and Mitchell (1998), whichuses the perturbed-observation method. In this algo-rithm, the ensemble mean is supposed to be the bestestimate of the true state and the spread of the en-semble around the mean is a good estimate of the errorin the ensemble mean (Evensen 2003). The forecastand analysis error covariances, given by the matrix P,are defined as

P f ≅ P ef � �xf � xf��xf � xf�T and �8�

Pa ≅ Pea � �xa � xa��xa � xa�T, �9�

where the overbar denotes the ensemble mean and su-perscripts a and f denote analysis and forecast, respec-tively. Each ensemble member is updated by the analy-sis equation

xia � xi

f � P fHT�HP fHT � R �1�yio � Hxi

f�, �10�

where i represents the ith ensemble member and xfi is

the first guess obtained from the ith ensemble forecast.In addition, H is the observation operator, which con-verts the model states to the observed parameters, andH in its standard notion is the linearized version of H ina matrix form but will not be explicitly evaluated any-where in the analysis procedure. The linearization isrequired to arrive at the optimal analysis covarianceminimizing solution (see, e.g., Kalnay 2002). FollowingEvensen (2003) and Houtekamer and Mitchell (1998),observations are treated as random variables having adistribution with a mean equal to the first-guess obser-vations yo and error covariances given by matrix R.Thus an ensemble of observations is obtained by

yio � yo � �i, �11�

and the observation error covariance matrix is calcu-lated from the random errors added to the observa-tions, as given in Eq. (11):

R � Re � ��T, �12�

where � is observation error. The above calculation ofR is only possible with OSSE experiments where ob-servations contaminated by errors with known varianceand distribution are constructed. For real observations,a certain estimate of R has to be made. Also, our as-sumption about the noncorrelation among the observa-tional errors determines that R is diagonal. Finally, inour current application, yo includes the radial velocityand reflectivity.

The forecast error covariances are calculated from

PfHT ≅1

N � 1 �i

N

�xif � xf��H�xi

f� � H�xf� T, �13�

and

HPfHT ≅1

N � 1 �i

N

�H�xif� � H�xf� �H�xi

f� � H�xf� T,

�14�

where N is the number of ensemble members. The useof the nonlinear observation operator in the evaluationof covariances in Eqs. (13) and (14) is an advantage ofEnKF compared to a traditional extended Kalman fil-ter for nonlinear problems (Evensen 2003).

As can be seen, the nonlinear observation operatorH is directly used in Eqs. (13)–(14), and H and its trans-pose are not evaluated directly (the transpose of H orthe adjoint of the observation operator is needed byvariational assimilation methods). The underlying as-sumption of standard extended Kalman filter theory(which is the basis of EnKF) is that the forecast modeland the observation operator are linear. The nonlinear-ity in the forecast model and the observation operator(such as that of reflectivity data) can make the algo-rithm suboptimal. Strong nonlinearity would also ren-der initially Gaussian error distributions non-Gaussian.In this study, the performance of the EnKF in such asituation will be examined.

We start the initial ensemble forecast at 20 min ofmodel time when the storm cell developing out of aninitial bubble reaches peak intensity. To initialize theensemble members, random noises are added to theinitially horizontally homogeneous background that isbased on the environmental sounding. The randomnoises are sampled from Gaussian distributions withzero mean and standard deviation of 3 m s�1 for u, �,and w, and 3 K for potential temperature. The pressure,moisture, and microphysical variables are not per-turbed. The technique of adding initial perturbation hasbeen discussed by former studies of Snyder and Zhang(2003) and Dowell et al. (2004), who found that addinginitial perturbations to the entire computational do-main would introduce spurious cells in individual mem-bers. Limiting the perturbation region around the ob-served storm area helps improve the assimilation result.However, for general applications of EnKF, the en-semble forecast should cover all scales of motion. We


chose to apply the initial perturbations to the entiredomain except for the grid points at the lateral bound-ary to keep the system more general. The open lateralboundary condition is sensitive to boundary errors andinitial perturbations introduced at the boundary werefound to trigger spurious storm development withinsome ensemble members. Assimilating reflectivity inclear-air region is found to help suppress spurious cellsin the interior domain, hence allowing a more generalapplication of the initial perturbations.

The observations are assimilated every 5 min. Thefirst analysis is performed at 25 min and 100 ensemblemembers are used. As mentioned earlier, observationsare perturbed by adding Gaussian noise, with a stan-dard deviation of 1 m s�1 for radial velocity and 5 dBZfor reflectivity. The observation errors are assumed tobe uncorrelated; therefore, observations can be and areanalyzed sequentially one at a time, following Houteka-mer (2001). When using a small (relatively to the de-grees of freedom of the analysis system) ensemble toestimate the background error covariances, the esti-mated values between distant grid points are not reli-able. Therefore covariance localization is necessary(Houtekamer and Mitchell 1998; Anderson 2001;Hamill et al. 2001; Houtekamer 2001).

In our early study (Tong and Xue 2004), we limitedthe influence region of each observation to a rectangu-lar region with a half-width of two grid intervals in bothhorizontal and vertical directions, equivalent to 4 and 1km in the horizontal and vertical, respectively. Someuseful information beyond that region of influence wasnot utilized (though the computation was faster). Tospatially smooth the analysis increments as well as tolocalize covariances, Houtekamer (2001) proposed amethod that applies a Schur (elementwise) product ofthe background error covariance calculated from theensemble and a correlation function with local support.This method was also used by Dowell et al. (2004). Inthe same way, we multiply each element of the back-ground error matrix PHT with a weight computed fromthe correlation function given by Eq. (4.10) of Gaspariand Cohn (1999). The weight decreases gradually from1 at the observation point to zero at an effective cutoffradius and remains zero beyond. Through assimilationexperiments with cutoff radii ranging from 4 to 10 km,we found that 8 km worked the best with 100 ensemble

members. This value is therefore used in all experi-ments presented in this paper. The use of a smoothfilter function is found to produce a significantly betteranalysis than the sharp cutoff function used earlier inTong and Xue (2004).

The EnKF algorithm tends to underestimate theanalysis uncertainty owing to the use of limited en-semble size. To solve this problem, we tested thedouble-ensemble method (Houtekamer and Mitchell1998), in which the statistics estimated from one en-semble are used to update the other. However, thisapproach overestimated the analysis uncertainty in ourcase and did not help improve our analysis. We alsotested the covariance inflation approach of Anderson(2001), which did not work well at first. As found inSnyder and Zhang (2003), it enhances the spurious cellin ensemble members. A modification is then made byapplying covariance inflation to the grid points that willbe influenced directly during the analysis update by theobservations found within the precipitation (where ob-served Z � 10 dBZ) regions. To do this, we check foreach grid point to see if within an 8-km radius (the sameradius used by the covariance localization) there is atleast one reflectivity data point greater than 10 dBZ. Ifit is true, then covariance inflation is applied to this gridpoint. This is found to improve our analysis. The infla-tion factor we used is 1.07 or 7% when radial velocityor/and reflectivity data in the precipitation region areassimilated. When reflectivity data of complete cover-age are used, the inflation factor is increased to 1.1(10%). Zhang et al. (2004) proposed another alterna-tive to the traditional covariance inflation that is toavoid enhancing spurious cells but CSS found that theuse of the method degrades the quality of analysis.

3. The assimilation experiments

Table 1 lists eight experiments to be discussed in thispaper. The assimilation scheme is first tested by assimi-lating radial velocity or reflectivity data alone or byassimilating both. Further, data coverage tests are per-formed in which each data type is available either in theentire domain or only in regions where reflectivity ex-ceeds 10 dBZ (referred to as the precipitation region).Additional variations have to do with the ways analysis

TABLE 1. List of data assimilation experiments.

ExptObservation: radial velocity (Vr)

and/or reflectivity (Z ) Update of qr, qs, and qh

Update of u, �, w, q� , qc, and qi

when assimilating reflectivity

VrP Vr (Z � 10 dBZ ) YesVrF Vr YesZP Z (Z � 10 dBZ) Yes YesVrZPa Vr & Z (Z � 10 dBZ ) Yes YesVrZPb Vr & Z (Z � 10 dBZ ) Yes NoVrZPc Vr & Z (Z � 10 dBZ ) Yes Yes, start from fourth cycleVrPZF Vr (Z � 10 dBZ ) and Z Yes Yes, start from the fourth cycleVrPnoIce Vr (Z � 10 dBZ ) No


variables are updated during the assimilation cycles.The results are discussed in the following sections.

a. Assimilations using radial velocity data only

In experiment VrP (see Table 1), we assume that theradial velocity data are available in precipitation re-gions where the reflectivity is greater than 10 dBZ. Af-ter only one analysis cycle (at t � 25 min), the basicpatterns of middle-level horizontal winds around thestorm appear reasonable (not shown). After three moreanalysis cycles, that is, by 40 min, the basic structures ofupdraft and horizontal flow (Fig. 1e) as well as pertur-bation temperature (not shown) above the low-levelcold pool are reasonably well retrieved. The low-levelcold pool and the associated divergence are too weak atthis time (Fig. 2e). Some hydrometeors can be retrievedat this time, but their amount and locations are not yetaccurate. Two assimilation cycles later, at 50 min, thestrength of the updraft and the magnitude of the tem-

perature perturbation (except that in the low-level coldpool) become reasonably good.

At 60 min, the retrieved microphysical fields also be-come rather close to the truth as seen from the verticalcross sections [Figs. 3a(2)–f(2)], and so do most otherfields (Figs. 1f and 2f). The largest differences at thistime are found at the low levels (Fig. 2f), where pre-cipitation and cooling in the otherwise unperturbedlow-level inflow region exist, and near the westernboundary. Evaporative cooling due to spurious precipi-tation in some ensemble members was the cause. Muchof the error is corrected by subsequent analyses and, by100 min (Fig. 2h), the precipitation in the inflow regionis generally gone except for a small area ahead of therear-flank gust front. The low-level flow and reflectivitypatterns as well as the shape of the cold pool now agreequite well with the truth (Figs. 2h and 2d) althoughsmall differences are still found with the exact locationof the boundary of rain-cooled regions (as indicated bythe 0° �� contours) and in the areal coverage of the

FIG. 2. Horizontal perturbation wind (vectors; m s�1), perturbation potential temperature (thick blacklines for 0 K and thin-dashed contours at 0.5-K intervals) and computed reflectivity (thin solid contoursand shading at intervals of 5 dBZ, starting from 15 dBZ ) at z � 250 m: (a)-(d) truth, and EnKF analysesfrom (e)–(h) VrP, (i)–(l) VrZPc, and (m)–(p) VrPZF.


leading precipitation region on the east-northeast side.The agreement at the 6-km level is even better (Figs. 1hand 1d). These results indicate that even with radialvelocity data in the precipitation region only, the EnKFsystem is able to rebuild the model storm remarkablywell after a sufficient number of assimilation cycles.Analysis of such quality can only be expected of meth-ods that make use of multiple radar volume scans ef-fectively and in a way that is compatible with the hope-fully correct model physics.

We use the root-mean-square (rms) error of the en-semble mean analysis to judge quantitatively the qual-ity of the analysis. The rms errors are averaged overthose grid points where the reflectivity is greater than10 dBZ. The rms errors of velocities, temperature,cloud, and hydrometeor variables in experiment VrPare seen to decrease rapidly during the first four assimi-lation cycles (over 20 min) and the analysis tends toconverge at about 70 min (Fig. 4, black curves). When

the analysis converges, the rms analysis error for thehorizontal wind components is generally less than 1m s�1 and about 0.5 m s�1 for the vertical velocity. Forperturbation potential temperature ��, the analysis er-ror decreases to less than 0.5 K at 60 min. Such velocityerrors are similar to or less than the observational er-rors added to the radial velocity, which means that after8–10 assimilation cycles, the EnKF system is producinga very good estimate of the state of the simulated storm.

In experiment VrF, in which Vr data cover the entiredomain, the analysis converges more quickly and theanalysis errors are smaller (black dotted lines in Fig. 4).The retrieved winds, potential temperature, pressure,and water vapor content are significantly better thanthose of the VrP case. The retrieved microphysicalfields are also improved, but not as much as when thefull coverage reflectivity data are used (results to bepresented later). For radial velocity data to be availableoutside the precipitation region, the radar has to be

FIG. 3. The retrieved (a) perturbation q� [solid (dashed) contours represent positive (negative) values], (b) qc, (c) qr, (d) qi, (e) qs,and (f) qh. (contours and shading at intervals of 0.5 g kg�1 for q� perturbation, qc, qi, and qs, and of 1.0 g kg�1 for qr and qh) in the x–zplane at y � 29 km that pass through the maximum updraft at t � 60 min: (a1)–(f1) truth simulation, (a2)–(f2) VrP, (a3)–(f3) VrPnoIce,(a4)–(f4) ZP, and (a5)–(f5) VrPZF.


operating in high-sensitivity mode, which is generallynot the case with the WSR-88D network when precipi-tation is present. However, when such data are avail-able, our experiment shows a clear positive impact ofthe data.

In our earlier study (Tong and Xue 2004), we foundthat when the pressure field is analyzed (updated by theanalysis procedure), the pressure error increases (in-stead of decreases) after each analysis cycle. A carefulexamination of the results reveals that the main prob-lem was associated with a domain-wide pressure drift inthe forecast that often occurs in simulations using asmall computational domain and an open boundarycondition. The background error covariance betweenpressure and observations in the presence of the pres-sure drift was apparently not correct, causing a negativeanalysis impact on the pressure field. In all experimentspresented here, the pressure detrending option of theARPS model is turned on, which forces the domain-mean perturbation Exner function to zero after eachforecast time step. The model solution, at least in thedry case, should be independent of the perturbationExner function to an arbitrary constant.

After applying pressure detrending, the pressuredrift is much more controlled and the update of thepressure by analysis does reduce its error in general,though not as much as for other fields (cf. e.g., blackcurves in Figs. 4e and 4c). At 40 min in the currentexperiment (VrP), the basic pattern of the perturbation

pressure can be reasonably reconstructed (not shown).Noticeable noises associated with acoustic oscillationsremain at low levels at this time, which are reduced byadditional assimilation cycles. However, as can be seenin Fig. 4e (black curve), the forecast error of the pres-sure perturbation starts to increase again at 65 min, andthe error is not effectively reduced by further analysis.It is found that in this case some positive pressure driftstill occurs in the ensemble-mean forecast and analysisbelow 4 km. The positive pressure perturbation associ-ated with the cold pool is about 20 Pa higher than in thetruth. The low pressure below the updraft is not as lowas it should be. Such pressure biases appear to be pre-venting the EnKF scheme from working effectively inreducing the pressure errors, which is only indirectlyrelated to Vr. It will be shown later that when reflec-tivity data are assimilated, the pressure drift problem isalleviated and the analysis of pressure is improved.

b. Impact of assimilating reflectivity data

Reflectivity is a measurement that is provided by alltypes of weather radar. In this section, we examine ifreflectivity data alone are sufficient for the model toreproduce the true storm; we also study their valuewhen used in combination with radial velocity data. Wenote that the observation operator for reflectivity isnonlinear and there exist more uncertainties with thereflectivity operator (because of uncertainties with the

FIG. 4. The rms errors of the ensemble-mean forecast and analysis, averaged over points at which the reflectivity is greater than 10dBZ for (a) u, (b) �, (c) w, and (d) perturbation potential temperature ��, (e) perturbation pressure p�, (f) qc, (g) qr, (h) q� (the curveswith larger values), qi (the curves with lower values), (i) qs and ( j) qh, for experiments VrP (black) and ZP (gray), and VrF (blackdotted lines). Units are shown in the plots. The drops in the error curves at specific times correspond to the reduction of error byanalysis.


cloud microphysics, the effects of attenuation, and oth-ers) than with the radial velocity. In our model, therainwater, snow, and hail mixing ratios, qr, qs, and qh,are directly related to the observed reflectivity throughEqs. (3)–(7). Therefore, the experiments further testthe performance of the EnKF scheme for nonlinearobservations.

In experiment ZP (see Table 1), reflectivity (Z) datagreater than 10 dBZ are assimilated but not radial ve-locity. Generally, the analysis obtained by assimilatingreflectivity data only is not as good as the analysis as-similating radial velocity data alone. As can be seen inFig. 4 (gray curves), the analysis acts to reduce the rmserrors in qr, qh, qs, qc, qi, w, and �� from the third cyclewith the reduction of error in qh being much larger.Significant reduction in the errors of the horizontalwind components and in q� did not start until after fourto five cycles. In fact, during the first two cycles, theupdate of most variables increases rather than de-creases the error (see, e.g., the gray curves in Fig. 4d for�� and Fig. 4h for q�). A significant reduction in theerrors of the horizontal wind components and in q� didnot start until after four to five cycles.

The delay in the reduction of or even an increase inthe rms errors in variables not directly related to Z isrelated to our initial perturbation method. When theensemble members are initialized, cloud and hydrom-eteor fields are not perturbed. This is reasonable be-cause the location of the precipitation region is un-known before the observational data are introduced.Adding hydrometeor perturbations everywhere in themodel is undesirable because nonzero values in certainvariables like cloud ice should only exist under certain

conditions. If the initial background contains some in-formation about the cloud, then random perturbationscan be added to the related fields in a way similar tothat for the other fields. Without direct initial pertur-bations to them, it takes the model a couple of assimi-lation cycles to develop clouds and hydrometeors andto establish coherent covariance structures for a reli-able estimation of the error covariances. For these rea-sons, updating indirectly related variables in the firstfew cycles increases their errors. Enough ensemblespread is established starting from the third assimilationcycle; from then on, the analysis is able to correct fore-cast errors in fields including w, ��, qc, qr, qi, qs, and qh

(Fig. 4). Reliable covariances between reflectivity andp, q�, and the horizontal wind components are slower todevelop and the analysis correction starts a couple ofcycles later.

Because of the lack of reliable covariances, the re-trieved model fields in ZP are not good at 40 min (Fig.1i). By 45 min, the storm updraft and temperature per-turbation pattern become reasonable. The locations ofthe hydrometeors are now close to the truth. However,horizontal wind patterns are still not very good at thistime. From 60 min on, the basic structure and the evo-lution of the storm, including the split storm cells, be-come rather accurate. The errors in all fields are furtherreduced in the subsequent assimilation cycles (Fig. 4),but remain higher than those in the VrP case by the endof the assimilation period (100 min).

Retrieving the model state from the observed vari-ables in the EnKF system relies heavily on a good es-timate of the flow-dependent multivariate backgrounderror covariances. Figure 5 shows, for experiment ZP,

FIG. 5. Forecast error correlations estimated from an ensemble at t � 80 min for experiment ZP in the x–z plane at y � 29 km, whichpasses through the maximum updraft. The error correlation [thick solid (dash) contours represent positive (negative) correlations atintervals of 0.2] between forecast reflectivity Z at x � 32 km and z � 6 km (indicated by a black dot) and (a) u, (b) w, (c) ��, (d) p�,(e) qc, (f) qr, (g) qi, and (h) qh. The shading and thin solid (thin dashed) contours in (a)–(d) indicate positive (negative) values of modelfields from the truth simulation with increments of 4 m s�1 for u and w; 2 K for ��, and 40 Pa for p�. The shading and thin contours in(e)–(h) indicate the values of the mixing ratios of water and ice fields from the truth simulation with an increment of 0.5 g kg�1 for qc,and qi and 1 g kg�1 for qr and qh.


the forecast background error correlations between re-flectivity at point x � 32 km, z � 6 km and the modelvariables at each grid point in an x–z vertical cross sec-tion through the maximum updraft (y � 29 km) at 80min (the correlation patterns for other experiments atthis time are similar). As can be seen, for the water andice fields, significant correlations are mostly confined tothe regions where their nonzero values are found. Forw and ��, the correlation patterns also match those of wand �� themselves in general, and significant correla-tions extend through much of the troposphere depth,which is consistent with the nature of deep convection.The maximum correlations for w and �� exceed 0.8,indicating that they are highly correlated with reflectiv-ity. Generally, positive correlations are associated withupdraft and high buoyancy; negative correlations arefound in the recirculation regions. The correlation for�� spreads above the tropopause in a wavy pattern bothupstream and downstream, which should be related tothe gravity wave propagation in the stable stratificationthere.

Even for pressure, coherent structures of significantcorrelation exist. The maximum negative correlation isfound at the midlevels where the perturbation pressurehas a minimum; the maximum positive correlation ex-ists near the cloud top. This correlation pattern can beexplained by the rotating supercell storm dynamics.Stronger updraft rotation produces lower midlevelpressure, which promotes stronger updraft thereforeproducing more reflectivity. Stronger updraft, accom-panied by larger reflectivity, will produce larger posi-tive pressure perturbations at the cloud top due to bothhydrostatic and Bernoulli effects. These suggest that

the error correlations estimated from the forecast en-semble are dynamically consistent. It is these valuablecorrelations that act to spread the information from theobservation points to the finite domain surroundingthem and that retrieve the unobserved variables fromthe observed ones. The results also justify our choice ofthe influence region in the covariance localization.Most of the significant correlations within 4 km of thecenter of the influence region are kept and smallerweights are given to the correlations extending up to8 km.

c. Assimilation of both radial velocity andreflectivity

In the next set of experiments (VrZPa-c, VrPZF; seeTable 1), we combine the radial velocity and reflectivitydata into the assimilation process. Experiment VrZPais a combination of VrP and ZP, in which both theradial velocity and reflectivity in the precipitation re-gions (Z � 10 dBZ) are assimilated, using the sameprocedure as in VrP and ZP. Compared to VrP (Fig. 6),when additional reflectivity data are introduced, theanalyses of qr, qs, and qh are generally improved, espe-cially for qr and qh, as indicated by lower errors aftereach analysis. The forecast error growth in this experi-ment is faster, however, even for those three variablesdirectly related to Z.

The analysis errors of q� and p� remain higher thanthose in VrP until 60 and 80 min, respectively, but be-come noticeably smaller afterward. For most of the as-similation period, the wind components are not as ac-curate as those retrieved by assimilating only Vr, butthey can reach the same accuracy in the last few cycles.

FIG. 6. As in Fig. 4, but for expt VrZPa (black) and expt VrP (gray).


For ��, qc, and qi, the analysis errors from VrZPa arelarger in the first two to three cycles, smaller in the nextfew, and then remain similar to those in VrP case.

The lack of significant positive impact by the inclu-sion of reflectivity data, especially during the first fewassimilation cycles, is due to the reasons discussed ear-lier for ZP. In the first two to four cycles, backgrounderror covariances between reflectivity and the modelvariables that are not directly related to Z are not re-liable. Updating these variables based on reflectivitydata and the unreliable covariances hurts the analysis,as indicated by the increase of errors in w, ��, qc, and q�

by, for example, the second analysis cycle (the errorincrease is actually rather bad for qc and q�; see Fig. 6).The increased analysis errors lead to a less accurateforecast and faster error growth. Despite all of this, theanalyses toward the end of the assimilation period aresimilar or better for most fields in VrZPa than in VrP,indicating the significant positive impact of Z whengood error estimation becomes available. Interestingly,the degradation of the analysis in the early cycles by theassimilation of rainwater content is also noted by CSS,which includes warm rain microphysics.

We note that in Dowell et al. (2004), which employswarm rain microphysics, it is found that updating qr

only when assimilating reflectivity observations helps tomaintain a realistic structure of the precipitation coreand to improve the velocity verification score. We per-formed a corresponding experiment, VrZPb (blackcurves in Fig. 7), in which only qr, qs, and qh are up-dated when assimilating reflectivity. As was found inVrZPa, the analyses of qr, qs, and qh are improved overthose of VrP. The analysis of q� is also better. For most

of the other variables, the improvement over VrP isgenerally small, if any (Fig. 7). There are also a fewcycles in which the retrieved w and qi are not as good asthose of VrP. Since it was shown earlier that reflectivitydoes have significant correlations with indirectly re-lated variables (Fig. 5), we do not believe it appropriateto completely exclude those variables from the analysisupdate when assimilating reflectivity data. A better so-lution needs to be found.

From previous experiments, it can be seen that thenegative impact of using reflectivity to update variablesrather than qr, qs, and qh is mainly caused by the incor-rect background covariances in the first two to threecycles. After that, the reflectivity becomes beneficial inretrieving those model fields. To see if we can furtherimprove the analysis, in experiment VrZPc (Table 1),we apply the update due to reflectivity only to qr, qs,and qh before the fourth cycle. Starting from the fourthcycle, all model variables are updated. It is shown inFig. 8 that doing so improves the analysis overall. Theretrieved q�, potential temperature and pressure areimproved over VrP more than are those in experimentVrZPb. Significant improvement could also be found inqc and qs. For velocity components, the improvementsare also slightly larger, especially in the later cycles.

The retrieved updraft and horizontal wind fields inthe middle level are shown in Figs. 1m–1p. The detailedstructures of the updrafts of the split cells starting from60 min (Figs. 1n–1p) are retrieved better than those ineither VrP (Figs. 1f–1h) or ZP (Figs. 1j–1l). At 80 and100 min, the pattern and strength of the left mover, aless organized and therefore more difficult one to ana-lyze, are clearly better retrieved by experiment VrZPc.

FIG. 7. As in Fig. 4, but for expt VrZPb (black) and expt VrP (gray).


Figure 2 shows the retrieved low-level cold pool, gustfront, and precipitation pattern from different experi-ments, in terms of the low-level ��, wind vectors, andmodel-computed reflectivity. The benefit of using re-flectivity data can be better seen from this figure. With-out reflectivity data (VrP), the retrieved precipitationis much less, especially during the early cycles. Spuriousechoes are found in the clear-air region in both casesbut much less so in VrZPc (Fig. 2). They are relatedto spurious cells in individual ensemble members. Theassimilation of reflectivity data reduced the spuriousechoes.

In the previous experiments, only reflectivity largerthan 10 dBZ is assimilated. In reality, reflectivity out-side the precipitation regions also contains valid infor-mation. At least it indicates the absence of precipitatingparticles there. One can therefore assume that the re-flectivity data cover the entire region within the radarrange, which in our current case means the entire com-putational domain. In our next OSSE, named VrPZF(Table 1), reflectivity information is available every-where while radial velocity data remain available inprecipitation (Z � 10 dBZ) regions only. As in VrZPc,u, �, w, ��, q�, qc, and qi are updated starting from thefourth cycle when assimilating reflectivity while qr, qs,and qh are updated from beginning.

The complete coverage of the reflectivity data canremove spurious cells that would otherwise develop inthe data-void regions. The rms analysis errors in VrPZF(Fig. 9, thin black curves) are decreased more overthose in VrP or VrZPc (Fig. 8). The retrieved horizon-tal wind fields, the strength of the updraft (Fig. 1), thelow-level perturbation potential temperature (Fig. 2),

and the microphysical fields (Fig. 3) are more accuratethan those retrieved by any of the previous experi-ments. The reflectivity computed from the analysis(Figs. 2m–p) very closely resembles that in the truthsimulation with no spurious echoes found in the clear-air region. Toward the later period of the assimilation,the strength of the low-level cold pool can be retrievedvery well by all three of the experiments (Fig. 2). How-ever, only when complete reflectivity data coverage isused, as in the case of VrPZF, can the extent of thelow-level rain-cooled air, as indicated by the 0-K con-tour of the perturbation potential temperature, be ac-curately determined. This is actually very important forthe subsequent forecast as spurious cooling in the in-flow region is found in some cases to reduce the CAPEin the inflow and adversely affects the evolution of en-suing forecast. Experiment VrPZF produces the bestforecast (more later) among all of the assimilation ex-periments, for this and other reasons.

Finally, we briefly discuss the ensemble spread,which is defined as the square root of the ensemblevariance and plotted in Fig. 9 for experiment VrPZF.Since EnKF estimates the forecast error using the en-semble spread, in an ideal situation, the ratio of thespread of the ensemble to the error of the ensemblemean forecast is equal to �Ne /(Ne � 1) (Murphy 1988).As we can see from Fig. 9, the ensemble spread gradu-ally approaches the ensemble mean forecast error formost variables, a favorable sign. During the earlycycles, the ensemble spread is much smaller than therms error and therefore provides a poor representationof the forecast error, a behavior also observed by Sny-der and Zhang (2003). The ratio increases rapidly dur-

FIG. 8. As in Fig. 4, but for expt VrZPc (black) and expt VrP (gray).


ing the first six to eight cycles for most variables(mainly because of the rapid decrease in forecast er-rors) then becomes more stable. In the last four or socycles, this ratio starts to decrease again, especially foru, �, w, ��, and p�. Such a decrease is typically observedas EnKF goes through successive assimilation cycles(e.g., Houtekamer and Mitchell 1998) owing to a sys-tematic underestimation of the analysis variance. In ourcase, this decrease in the later cycles is mainly due tothe faster error growth in the forecast rather than to achange in the ensemble spread; in fact, the ensemblespread remains essentially constant in the later cycles.The faster forecast error growth is, we believe, due tothe more transient nature of the flow after the stormwent through more than two splits. Snyder and Zhang(2003) noted, however, a continued increase in thespread-to-error ratio, and attributed the increase to thepresence of spurious cells in individual members. Simi-lar behavior is also observed in our experiment, VrP, inwhich spurious cells are not as effectively suppressed asthey are in VrPZF. We further note that in the last fewcycles of VrPZF, despite the increased forecast errors(Fig. 9), the analysis errors do not increase or increasevery little, indicating that the filter is well behaved.

d. Retrieval of microphysical fields

The microphysics retrieval is an important aspect ofconvective-scale data assimilation. Relatively few pre-vious data assimilation studies have focused on thisproblem. Most of these studies used only a simple mi-

crophysical parameterization and the ice phase is usu-ally excluded. The more recent attempt of Wu et al.(2000) uses a 4DVAR system to assimilate dual-polarization radar data into a cloud model. Generally,a good bulk ice microphysics parameterization in-cludes ice categories for cloud ice (individual crystals),snow (aggregates), and graupel and/or hail. As pointedout by Wu et al. (2000), such a model will have a com-plex adjoint model involving many nonlinearities, andthe 4DVAR system based on such an adjoint tends tohave poor convergence properties. For these reasons,Wu et al. (2000) made simplifications by using a schemewithout the snow category and by merging the cloudwater and cloud ice categories. Such simplifications re-duce the degrees of freedom (or the number of controlor analysis variables), and also reduce the number of,usually highly nonlinear, microphysical processes. Inaddition, in Wu et al. (2000), the reflectivity and differ-ential reflectivity data are converted first to rain andhail mixing ratios before assimilation, rather than beingassimilated directly. The differential reflectivity dataare necessary for such a conversion.

In our study, the original detailed ice microphysicsparameterization of Lin et al. (1983) is used and onlystandard reflectivity is assumed to be available. As aresult, our problem is more difficult because more wa-ter and ice species have to be determined and no dual-polarization information is available. Yet, the EnKFscheme does not seem to have any serious difficulty.Figure 3 shows the distribution of the perturbation wa-ter vapor and five categories of water substances for the

FIG. 9. As in Fig. 4, but for expt VrPZF (thin black curves) and expt VrP (thin gray curves). The additional thick black curves arefor the analysis and forecast ensemble spread of VrPZF, and the spread is calculated only at the points where reflectivity is greater than10 dBZ, as the errors are.


truth run and for selected assimilation experiments. Itcan be seen that the EnKF data assimilation system isable to establish detailed microphysical structures thathave very high fidelity. The quality of the actual analy-sis does depend on the usage and availability of thedata, as indicated quantitatively by the error plots dis-cussed earlier.

To better understand the way the EnKF schemeworks and the role of updating microphysical fields, weperformed another experiment, named VrPnoIce, inwhich ice variables qi, qs, and qh are not updated by theanalysis and only radial velocity in the precipitationregions is assimilated. The differences in error betweenVrPnoIce and VrP start to show with the third cycleand increase with successive cycles (Fig. 10). It can beseen that without the analysis update to these threevariables, the rms error of the qs analysis is greater thaneven that of the ensemble-mean forecast of experimentVrP. The qs field at 60 min [Fig. 3e(3)] exhibits largerspatial coverage in VrPnoIce and is less accurate thanthat of VrP [Fig. 3e(2)]. The smaller difference in theearlier period reflects a relatively weak link (throughbackground error covariance) between Vr and thesethree variables. The link apparently becomes strongerand more effective in correcting errors in these fields atthe later stage (as in the case of VrP). On the otherhand, despite the lack of direct correction in VrPnoIceto qi, qs, and qh, the errors in these fields are still re-duced with time in general. Such reductions areachieved through model dynamics; when other modelfields are improved, fields that are not directly updatedhave to adjust and become consistent with these fields.This points to the power of model-based dynamic dataassimilation methods.

Further comparison of VrP and ZP helps us under-stand the interactions between the analyses of differentvariables. We see from Fig. 4, that the errors in thewind, temperature, and pressure fields remain muchhigher in the ZP case than in VrP for almost the entireassimilation period, with the differences being largestduring the earlier cycles. During this early period, theassimilation of the reflectivity data in ZP is very effec-

tive in reducing errors in qh, qs as well as in qr while thegenerally poor analysis of the other fields is causingrapid increases in the forecast error. We note here thatthe fact that qr, qs, and qh are directly related to Z doesnot guarantee a good retrieval of them because withoutthe help of the error covariances offered by the EnKFscheme, the problem is underdetermined. When reflec-tivity data are combined with radial velocity data, veryaccurate microphysical fields can be retrieved (Figs. 2and 3). With Vr data only (the case of VrP), the maxi-mum value of qh in Fig. 3f(2) is 5.73 g kg�1 at 60 minwhile the true value is 6.63 g kg�1. If the ice hydro-meteors are not updated when assimilating Vr (experi-ment VrPnoIce), the maximum is larger than 1 g kg�1

smaller than the truth. The addition of the full-coveragereflectivity data [Fig. 3f(5)] yields a maximum value of6.37 g kg�1 that is closer to the truth.

4. Forecasts from ensemble-mean analyses

Since the goal of data assimilation is to provide agood initial condition for numerical weather prediction,in this section we look at the quality of forecasts pro-duced from the analyses. Figure 11 shows the truth andtwo forecasts over a 130-min period that are initializedfrom the ensemble-mean analyses from experimentsVrP and VrPZF at 80 min. Within the first 20 min (from80 to 100 min), the forecast of VrPZF maintains mostdetails of the storm very well, including the strength,structure, and location of the updraft and the furthersplitting of the left mover. Within the first hour of fore-cast, the position of the right mover is forecast veryaccurately by experiment VrPZF. After that, the centerof the right-moving cell is displaced about 4–8 km east-ward during its southeastward propagation. The fore-cast beginning from VrP roughly captures the evolutionof the storm but not as accurately as in VrPZF. Theright mover propagates southeastward even faster thanin VrPZF and reaches the southern boundary earlier; at210 min, the structure of the forecast storm is ratherdifferent from that of the true one.

FIG. 10. Rms error of (a) qi, (b) qs, and (c) qh for VrP (gray) and VrPnoIce (black).


Figure 12 shows the rms errors (averaged over theentire domain) of forecasts beginning from the en-semble-mean analyses of different times from experi-ments VrP and VrPZF. Generally, a more accurate es-timate of the initial condition yields a better forecast. Itcan be seen in Fig. 12 that for all these forecasts, withinthe first 80 min, both the forecast error and the forecasterror growth rate of VrPZF (black thick curves) aresmaller than those of VrP (gray thin curves). For theforecasts starting from 80 min, a large difference is seenin rainwater at around 120 min between the forecasterrors of these two experiments (Fig. 12c). Within thefirst 40 min of forecast, the qr forecast error in VrPgrows much faster than in VrPZF. The low-level rain-water was overforecast by experiment VrP. For ex-ample, at 105 min, the maximum value of the forecastrainwater at 250 m AGL is 8.54 g kg�1 for experimentVrP, while that of the truth is only 5.91 g kg�1 (notshown). The low-level rainwater was also overforecastby experiment VrPZF, but not by as much. The forecastdistribution of the rainwater in VrPZF is always closerto the truth than in VrP. The comparison of the forecasterrors of these two experiments further verifies thebenefit of assimilating reflectivity data in both precipi-tation and clear-air regions. For forecasts starting fromthe ensemble-mean analysis of VrF (not shown here),the errors are smaller than those of VrP, but generallybigger than those of VrPZF within the 80 min of theforecast.

We note that for the forecasts starting from 100 min,

the errors of VrPZF grow faster after 175 min andeventually become larger than those of VrP. This isfound to be mainly associated with the slower south-eastward propagation of the forecast storm in VrPZFthan in the true storm. Usually, phase error increaseswith the length of the forecast. In this case, the center ofthe updraft forecast by experiment VrPZF is located2–8 km, or one to four grid intervals, north of the truestorm during the last 50 min. The center of the updraftin VrP is closer to the true storm during the later fore-cast period. However, within the last 20 min, phaseerror also occurs within VrP. The forecast storm movesfaster than the true storm and the center of the updraftbecomes displaced by 2–4 km to the south of the truestorm. Still, the storm structure in VrPZF is better thanthat in VrP at this stage.

The success of the forecast depends not only on theaccuracy of the analysis of the storm, but also on theanalysis of the storm environment. In our initial tests, inwhich the boundary zone is perturbed at the initial timeof ensemble forecast, we obtained similarly good analy-ses. However, the forecasts from some of these analysesdeteriorated quickly with time. In a forecast startingfrom analysis at 100 min, the right mover quickly decaysand moves northeastward. We found in that case thelow-level air was drier and the CAPE was reduced inthe storm inflow region. Spurious cells triggered nearthe boundary in individual ensemble members contrib-uted to this. Not perturbing the boundary at the initialtime and the use of zero reflectivity information outside

FIG. 11. Vertical velocity (contours and shading at intervals of 4 m s�1) and horizontal wind perturbation(vectors; m s�1) at the 6-km level for (a)–(e) the truth simulation and the forecast beginning from the ensemble-mean analysis at t � 80 min: (f)–( j) forecast from ensemble-mean analysis of VrPZF, and (k)–(o) forecast fromensemble-mean analysis of VrP. Note the difference in the plotting domains before and after 150 min.


the precipitation regions helped alleviate the problem.For general applications, other means and data shouldbe employed to ensure a good analysis of the stormenvironment, which for prediction purposes appears tobe at least as important as the analysis of the stormsthemselves.

5. Summary and discussion

In this study we applied the ensemble Kalman filtertechnique to the assimilation of simulated radar radialvelocity and reflectivity data, using a compressiblemodel with a complex multiclass ice microphysicsscheme. The inclusion of a complex multiclass ice mi-crophysics scheme has not been done before in either

EnKF or 4DVAR assimilation of radar data. Doing sointroduces additional model state (ice microphysics)variables that impose additional challenges to the re-trieval problem. Previously published EnKF researchdid not carefully examine the impact of assimilatingreflectivity data either, nor has attention been paid tothe analysis quality of microphysical variables. Ourwork also represents the first time that a compressiblemodel is used in the context of EnKF assimilation at thecloud scale.

The EnKF method is shown to have great potentialfor the assimilation of such data and for thunderstormprediction. Although the observation operator for thereflectivity data is nonlinear, which may lead to non-Gaussian error distribution and violate the basic as-

FIG. 12. The rms errors of the forecasts averaged over the entire domain for (a) w (m s�1), (b) �� (K),and (c) qr (g kg�1). The forecasts begin from the ensemble-mean analysis at t � 60 min (dotted), t � 80min (dashed), and t � 100 min (solid) of expt VrP (gray thin curves) and expt VrPZF (black thickcurves).


sumptions of the Kalman filter algorithm, direct assimi-lation of reflectivity data is shown to provide positiveimpacts overall on the analysis and subsequent forecast.

Flow-dependent forecast error covariances estimatedfrom the ensemble states play a critical role in the as-similation process. Through them not only can the windand thermodynamic fields be retrieved accurately, allfive categories of cloud and hydrometeor variables canalso be retrieved successfully. Compared to 4DVAR,the EnKF is a much easier yet effective method forobtaining microphysical fields that are compatible withthe model dynamics, thermodynamics, and microphys-ics. Compared to early efforts that insert radar obser-vations directly into numerical models without the useof covariance information (e.g., Liou et al. 1991), theEnKF method enjoys much greater success. The impor-tance of spatial covariance information is further sup-ported by the fact that a worse analysis is obtainedwhen the effective radius of the covariance localizationis too small (results not shown).

Reliable and dynamically consistent multivariate co-variances between the observed quantities and the statevariables not directly related to them can be obtainedafter a few assimilation cycles, even when the ensembleis started from initial guesses made up of an environ-mental sounding plus random perturbations. Spatial co-variance structures are shown to be dynamically con-sistent. After the initial two to three cycles, useful ob-servational information can be spread in space and toindirectly related variables. Delaying the update of in-directly related variables until after the first few cycleswhen assimilating reflectivity data, produces the bestanalysis. Using reflectivity information in clear-air re-gions is very beneficial in suppressing spurious storms(assuming that the radar network provides a completespatial coverage). The forecast initiated from the en-semble-mean analysis using Vr and full coverage reflec-tivity data is shown to be the best within about 80 minof all three forecasts presented. We should point outhere that if the EnKF assimilation system is run in acontinuously cycled mode, as an operational systemshould be, or if the ensemble is initialized in a morephysical way, such as using the breeding method (Tothand Kalnay 1997), then the delay in updating indirectlyrelated variables may not be necessary.

The EnKF data assimilation results reported hereused 100 ensemble members. We found that 40 en-semble members are enough to produce good analysisresults, except that the filter convergence rate is a littleslower. With 40 members, the radius of the data influ-ence region needs to be smaller. A radius of 6 km isfound to produce the best results in this case.

Snyder and Zhang (2003) noted that the results oftheir EnKF experiments were subject to some randomvariability associated with the specific realizations ofthe initial ensemble and observation errors. In thisstudy, we have repeated some of the experiments withdifferent realizations and we did not notice any signifi-

cant deviation from the results reported here in termsof the error characteristics. The larger ensemble sizeused here may account for some of the reduced vari-ability.

For larger applications, the analysis algorithm needsto be parallelized for distributed-memory parallel plat-forms. For our current application, we used shared-memory parallelization via OpenMP for the computa-tion of the background error covariance PHT, which isthe most expensive part of the algorithm. Four IBMRegatta (model p-690) processors give a speedup of 3.5for the analysis. The ensemble forecasts were distrib-uted among a number of processors.

Finally, we note that caution should be used wheninterpreting OSSE results. Both forecast model andforward observation operators are assumed perfect inthe current work. The effects of model error need to bestudied in the future. Much work is still needed in mov-ing us in the direction of real case and real data. Wealso mention that a similar set of assimilations usingsquare-root EnKF, which does not perturb the obser-vations (as used in, e.g., Snyder and Zhang 2003), hasalso been conducted with generally similar conclusions.

Acknowledgments. This work was supported by NSFGrant ATM0129892. The second author was also sup-ported by grants NSF ATM-9909007, ATM-0331594,and EEC-0313747; a DOT/FAA grant via DOC/NOAANA17RJ1227; and a grant from the Chinese NaturalScience Foundation (40028504). Dr. William Martincontributed to the initial development of the analysiscode. The authors also benefited from discussions withDrs. Fuqing Zhang and David Dowell and the review ofChris Snyder. The IBM Regatta is operated by OSCERof the University of Oklahoma.

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Ensemble Kalman Filter Assimilation of Doppler Radar Data