Identification

Title

Three-dimensional variational data assimilation of ground-based GPS ZTD and meteorological observations during the 14 December 2001 storm event over the western Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

The impact of GPS zenith total delay (ZTD) measurements on mesoscale weather forecasts is studied. GPS observations from a permanent European network are assimilated into the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University-NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5) using its three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVAR) system. The case study focuses on a snow storm that occurred during the period of 14 - 15 December 2001 over the western Mediterranean Sea. The experiments show that the most significant improvement in forecast is obtained when GPS ZTD data are assimilated together with local surface meteorological observations into the model within a cycling assimilation framework. In this case, the root-mean-square (rms) differences between forecasted and observed values are reduced by 1.7% in the wind component, 4.1% in the temperature variable, and 17.8% in the specific humidity field. This suggests the deployment of GPS receivers at surface stations to better initialize numerical weather prediction models during strong storm mesoscale events.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7639pwc

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2004-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Copyright 2004 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact