Impacts of Assimilating Surface Purpleair Pressure Observations (PPO) in the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)

High density pressure observations may help resolve important mesoscale weather features particularly in data sparse regions. These observations may come from numerous datasets, including the PurpleAir Pressure Observations (PPO) network. We explore several assimilation strategies in the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS), which is a convection-allowing (3-km grid spacing) ensemble-based data assimilation and forecasting system. We compare forecasts from retrospective simulations with and without the SPO/PPO observations in the data assimilation to available verification datasets.