All-Sky Radiance Assimilation for COAMPS-TC Tropical Cyclone Rapid Intensification Prediction

An all-sky radiance assimilation system is under development at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division to add new data assimilation capabilities for the US Navy’s COAMPS and COAMPS-TC to improve tropical cyclone (TC) and other high-impact storm prediction. Through an ONR-sponsored collaboration, advanced data assimilation techniques developed at Penn State University (PSU) for assimilating all-sky radiance data along with airborne Doppler radar winds and other in-situ observations have been implemented into an ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) for COAMPS and COAMPS-TC. The PSU team has successfully demonstrated the improved capability of these techniques for optimally merging the observed dynamical and physical structures inside the storms into the model initial fields. With the implementation of these techniques, the capability for COAMPS and COAMPS-TC to assimilate storm observations from satellites and other remote and in-situ sensors will be significantly advanced. This is expected to greatly improve the Navy’s capability to accurately predict TCs and storms over maritime regions, and will be especially important for more accurate analyses of TCs undergoing rapid intensification, which is typically void of conventional meteorological observations. Demonstrations of this new data assimilation capability will be presented.