Observation operator and observation processing for cloud lidar. Support-to-Science-Element (STSE) Study EarthCARE Assimilation

Title
Observation operator and observation processing for cloud lidar. Support-to-Science-Element (STSE) Study EarthCARE Assimilation
Report
Date Published
01/2014
Series/Collection
WP-1100 Report: ESA ESTEC Contract AO/I-6441/10/NL/CB
Document Number
2014:WP-1200
Author
S. Di Michele
Edouard Martins
Marta Janiskova
Event Series/Collection
ESA Contract Report
Abstract This work package aims at building the main components needed to handle lidar observations in clouds within the ECMWF monitoring/assimilation system. The results achieved are summarized in this report. The first part describes the lidar forward operator, developed to simulate CALIPSO observations in clouds. The second part deals with the characterization of the observation errors, needed for data assimilation. In case of space-borne lidar (similarly to radar bservations), the representativity error is an important component of the observation error. A flow-dependent estimate has been implemented for the CALIPSO lidar following the same approach previously used for the CloudSat radar. The final part of this document describes the development of a quality control and a bias correction scheme able to reduce departures between CALIPSO observations and model first guess to a level suitable for assimilation.
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