Error growth in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere based on hindcast experiments in a whole atmosphere model

The capability to forecast conditions in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere is investigated based on 30-day hindcast experiments that were initialized bimonthly during 2009 and 2010. The hindcasts were performed using the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere-ionosphere eXtension (WACCMX) with data assimilation provided by the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) ensemble Kalman filter. Analysis of the WACCMX+DART hindcasts reveals several important features that are relevant to forecasting the middle atmosphere. The results show a clear dependence on spatial scale, with the slowest error growth occurring in the zonal mean and the fastest error growth occurring for small-scale waves. The error growth rate is also found to be significantly greater in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere compared to in the upper stratosphere to lower mesosphere, suggesting that the forecast skill decreases with increasing altitude. The results demonstrate that the errors in the lower thermosphere reach saturation, on average, in less than 5 days, at least with the current version of WACCMX+DART. A seasonal dependency to the error growth is found at high latitudes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres but not in the tropics or global average. We additionally investigate the error growth rates for migrating and nonmigrating atmospheric tides and find that the errors saturate after similar to 5 days for tides in the lower thermosphere. The results provide an initial assessment of the error growth rates in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere and are relevant for understanding how whole atmosphere models can potentially improve space weather forecasting.