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Variational quality control
Author(s) -
Anderson Erik,
Järvinen Heikki
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49712555416
Subject(s) - data assimilation , variational analysis , quality (philosophy) , range (aeronautics) , computer science , control (management) , error analysis , mathematical optimization , mathematics , statistics , meteorology , artificial intelligence , physics , materials science , quantum mechanics , composite material
We describe the implementation of variational quality control in the operational four‐dimensional variational data assimilation scheme at the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). the quality control takes place during the iterative solution of the variational analysis problem itself, rather than in a separate step prior to the main analysis. This ensures that the quality control is consistent with the analysis in terms of error statistics, background and model constraints, in particular. All observational data are used and quality‐controlled simultaneously. the probability of gross error is computed for each observation, given the preliminary analysis at each iteration. the weight of each observation is smoothly decreased with increased likelihood for gross error. the formulation, the implementation details and results from data assimilation and forecast experiments are presented.