Assimilating Real-Time High-Resolution BUFR Radiosonde Rata in NAVGEM: Current Results and Future Prospects

               The U.S. Navy’s global numerical weather prediction system NAVGEM (Navy Global Environmental Model) has been operationally assimilating BUFR radiosonde data since September 2015, including high-resolution BUFR where available.  Many countries, including most of Europe as well as Australia, currently provide radiosonde data in BUFR with 1-2 second resolution, which translates to approximately 3500-7000 pressure levels.  All variables (i.e., pressure, height, temperature, humidity, and winds) are provided at each level with better precision than used for the TEMP and PILOT formats, along with balloon drift times and location offsets which are not available in the old formats.

The radiosonde data preprocessor in NAVGEM was rewritten to accommodate these high-resolution data, while also making use of low-resolution BUFR data as well as data decoded from the text TEMP and PILOT reports.  This paper will describe the methodology used in NAVGEM for assimilating high-resolution radiosonde data, the current availability of these data and their benefit in NAVGEM, and future prospects, including the availability of such data from U.S. NWS radiosonde stations.