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The Role of Data Assimilation in the Study of Regional and Global Variability of the Hydrological CycleIn the coming years, researchers will have at their disposal a host of new observations from advanced space-based sensors (e.g. the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, EOS Terra and PM missions) providing, among other things, a more complete and accurate description of various components of the Earth's hydrological cycle. Also, increasingly more sophisticated and comprehensive geophysical models will provide researchers better tools for simulating the hydrological cycle, and for carrying out mechanistic studies of the role of moist processes in the climate system. In addition, new data sets generated with global four-dimensional data assimilation (4DDA) systems will provide comprehensive and complete information on both the state and forcing of the climate system. Ideally, the 4DDA systems optimally incorporate all relevant information from the observations together with a first guess from a state-of-the-art geophysical model to produce a "best" estimate of the climate state. Furthermore, to the extent that the assimilating models are realistic and are constrained by the observations, they should provide reliable estimates of the associated physical processes or climate forcing fields. While operational weather centers now have a considerable history of providing reliable estimates of the basic atmospheric state variables, the associated processes or diagnostic fields (which are less well constrained by the observations and sensitive to errors in the model's physical parameterizations) are still considered experimental and of uncertain quality. In this study we will examine the current generation of reanalysis products to assess the capabilities of 4DDA systems to represent components of the hydrological cycle. The focus is on the role of the model in providing consistent estimates of moist processes. We will also assess whether current observations provide sufficient constraints on these model- generated fields.
Document ID
19990106309
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Schubert, Siegfried
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Chang, Yehui
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Chen, Tsing-Chang
(Iowa State Univ. of Science and Technology Ames, IA United States)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1999
Subject Category
Environment Pollution
Meeting Information
Meeting: Reanalyses
Location: Reading
Country: United Kingdom
Start Date: August 23, 1999
End Date: August 27, 1999
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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