Impact of satellite radiance observations in high resolution data assimilation systems

The impact of satellite radiance observations is assessed in preparation for the development of a new short-term convective-scale numerical weather prediction (NWP) system covering most of Canada at 2.5 km resolution. To provide high-resolution initial conditions for this system, a data assimilation system based on a fully cycling 4D-EnVar scheme is currently under development with analysis increments computed at 10 km resolution. This system is evaluated against Environment Canada's currently operational regional prediction system (with increments computed at 50 km resolution) and against a research version of a high resolution ensemble Kalman filter (with increments computed at 10 km resolution). Results comparing the impact of satellite observations in these systems will be presented.