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Experimenting with the GMAO 4D Data Assimilation

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has been working to promote its prototype four-dimensional variational (4DVAR) system to a version that can be exercised at operationally desirable configurations. Beyond a general circulation model (GeM) and an analysis system, traditional 4DV AR requires availability of tangent linear (TL) and adjoint (AD) models of the corresponding GeM. The GMAO prototype 4DVAR uses the finite-volume-based GEOS GeM and the Grid-point Statistical Interpolation (GSI) system for the first two, and TL and AD models derived ITom an early version of the finite-volume hydrodynamics that is scientifically equivalent to the present GEOS nonlinear GeM but computationally rather outdated. Specifically, the TL and AD models hydrodynamics uses a simple (I-dimensional) latitudinal MPI domain decomposition, which has consequent low scalability and prevents the prototype 4DV AR ITom being used in realistic applications. In the near future, GMAO will be upgrading its operational GEOS GCM (and assimilation system) to use a cubed-sphere-based hydrodynamics. This versions of the dynamics scales to thousands of processes and has led to a decision to re-derive the TL and AD models for this more modern dynamics, thus taking advantage of a two-dimensional MPI decomposition and improved scalability properties. With the aid of the Transformation of Algorithms in FORTRAN (l'AF) automatic adjoint generation tool and some hand-coding, a version of the cubed-sphere-based TL and AD models, with a simplified vertical diffusion scheme, is now available, enabling multiple configurations of standard implementations of 4DV AR in GEOS. Concurrent to this development, collaboration with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) has allowed GMAO to implement a hybrid-ensemble capability within the GEOS data assimilation system. Both 3Dand 4D-ensemble capabilities are presently available thus allowing GMAO to now evaluate the performance and benefit of various ensemble and variational assimilation strategies. This presentation will cover the most recent developments taking place at GMAO and show results from various comparisons from traditional techniques to more recent ensemble-based ones.

Todling, R.

NASA's GMAO Atmospheric Motion Vectors Simulator: Description and Application to the MISTiC Winds Concept

An atmospheric wind vectors (AMVs) simulator was developed by NASA's GMAO to simulate observations from future satellite constellation concepts. The synthetic AMVs can then be used in OSSEs to estimate and quantify the potential added value of new observations to the present Earth observing system and, ultimately, the expected impact on the current weather forecasting skill. The GMAO AMV simulator is a tunable and flexible computer code that is able to simulate AMVs expected to be derived from different instruments and satellite orbit configurations. As a case study and example of the usefulness of this tool, the GMAO AMV simulator was used to simulate AMVs envisioned to be provided by the MISTiC Winds, a NASA mission concept consisting of a constellation of satellites equipped with infrared spectral midwave spectrometers, expected to provide high spatial and temporal resolution temperature and humidity soundings of the troposphere that can be used to derive AMVs from the tracking of clouds and water vapor features. The GMAO AMV simulator identifies trackable clouds and water vapor features in the G5NR and employs a probabilistic function to draw a subset of the identified trackable features. Before the simulator is applied to the MISTiC Winds concept, the simulator was calibrated to yield realistic observations counts and spatial distributions and validated considering as a proxy instrument to the MISTiC Winds the Himawari-8 Advanced Imager (AHI). The simulated AHI AMVs showed a close match with the real AHI AMVs in terms of observation counts and spatial distributions, showing that the GMAO AMVs simulator synthesizes AMVs observations with enough quality and realism to produce a response from the DAS equivalent to the one produced with real observations. When applied to the MISTiC Winds scanning points, it can be expected that the MISTiC Winds will be able to collect approximately 60,000 wind observations every 6 hours, if considering a constellation composed of 12 satellites (4 orbital planes). In addition, one of the main expected impacts of the MISTiC Winds concept is the ability to derive water vapor feature tracking AMVs below 500-400 hPa, an unique feature among the water vapor AMVs derived from the current Earth observing system.

Carvalho, David

GEOS S2S-2_1 File Specification: GMAO Seasonal and Sub-Seasonal Forecast Output

The NASA GMAO seasonal (9 months) and subseasonal (45 days) forecasts are produced with the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model and Data Assimilation System Version S2S-2_1. The new system replaces version S2S-1.0 described in Borovikov et al (2017), and includes upgrades to many components of the system. The atmospheric model includes an upgrade from a pre-MERRA-2 version running on a latitude-longitude grid at approx. 1 degree resolution to a current version running on a cubed sphere grid at approximately 1/2 degree resolution. The important developments are related to the dynamical core (Putman et al., 2011), the moist physics (''two-moment microphysics'' of Barahona et al., 2014) and the cryosphere (Cullather et al., 2014). As in the previous GMAO S2S system, the land model is that of Koster et al (2000). GMAO S2S-2_1 now includes the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART, Colarco et al., 2010) single moment interactive aerosol model that includes predictive aerosols including dust, sea salt and several species of carbon and sulfate. The previous version of GMAO S2S specified aerosol amounts from climatology, which were used to inform the atmospheric radiation only. The ocean model includes an upgrade from MOM4 to MOM5 (Griffies 2012), and continues to be run on the tripolar grid at approximately 1/2 degree resolution in the tropics with 40 vertical levels. As in S2S-1.0, the sea ice model is from the Los Alamos Sea Ice model (CICE4, Hunke and Lipscomb 2010). The Ocean Data Assimilation System (ODAS) has been upgraded from the one described in Borovikov et al., 2017 to one that uses a modified version of the Penny, 2014 Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF), and now assimilates along-track altimetry. The ODAS also does a nudging to MERRA-2 SST and sea ice boundary conditions. The atmospheric data assimilation fields used to constrain the atmosphere in the ODAS have been upgraded from MERRA to a MERRA-2 like system. The system is initialized using a MERRA-2-like atmospheric reanalysis (Gelaro et al. 2017) and the GMAO S2S-2_1 ocean analysis. Additional ensemble members for forecasts are produced with initial states at 5-day intervals, with additional members based on perturbations of the atmospheric and ocean states. Both subseasonal and seasonal forecasts are submitted to the National MultiModel Ensemble (NMME) project, and are part of the US/Canada multimodel seasonal forecasts (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/). A large suite of retrospective forecasts (''hindcasts'') have been completed, and contribute to the calculation of the model's baseline climatology and drift, anomalies from which are the basis of the seasonal forecasts.

Seasonal Forecast

NASA's GMAO Atmospheric Motion Vectors Simulator: Description and Application to the MISTiC Winds Concept

An atmospheric wind vectors (AMVs) simulator was developed by NASA's GMAO to simulate observations from future satellite constellation concepts. The synthetic AMVs can then be used in OSSEs to estimate and quantify the potential added value of new observations to the present Earth observing system and, ultimately, the expected impact on the current weather forecasting skill. The GMAO AMV simulator is a tunable and flexible computer code that is able to simulate AMVs expected to be derived from different instruments and satellite orbit configurations. As a case study and example of the usefulness of this tool, the GMAO AMV simulator was used to simulate AMVs envisioned to be provided by the MISTiC Winds, a NASA mission concept consisting of a constellation of satellites equipped with infrared spectral midwave spectrometers, expected to provide high spatial and temporal resolution temperature and humidity soundings of the troposphere that can be used to derive AMVs from the tracking of clouds and water vapor features. The GMAO AMV simulator identifies trackable clouds and water vapor features in the G5NR and employs a probabilistic function to draw a subset of the identified trackable features. Before the simulator is applied to the MISTiC Winds concept, the simulator was calibrated to yield realistic observations counts and spatial distributions and validated considering as a proxy instrument to the MISTiC Winds the Himawari-8 Advanced Imager (AHI). The simulated AHI AMVs showed a close match with the real AHI AMVs in terms of observation counts and spatial distributions, showing that the GMAO AMVs simulator synthesizes AMVs observations with enough quality and realism to produce a response from the DAS equivalent to the one produced with real observations. When applied to the MISTiC Winds scanning points, it can be expected that the MISTiC Winds will be able to collect approximately 60,000 wind observations every 6 hours, if considering a constellation composed of 12 satellites (4 orbital planes). In addition, one of the main expected impacts of the MISTiC Winds concept is the ability to derive water vapor feature tracking AMVs below 500-400 hPa, an unique feature among the water vapor AMVs derived from the current Earth observing system.

Carvalho, David

Implementing JEDI into NASA GMAO’s Real Time Production Suite

NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has prepared their first production system involving the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) framework. In this system the central analysis, that drives the deterministic forecast, will be provided using JEDI. This talk outlines the phased approach to implementing JEDI into production that GMAO has designed, and how this approach will allow for a careful analysis of the system against the existing data assimilation framework (GSI). In the first phase of implementation the existing data assimilation system will perform certain actions that are still under development in JEDI. These include thinning the observations and producing satellite bias correction coefficients. JEDI is hooked up to the existing workflow so a single line switch can activate whether the existing or JEDI-based analysis is cycled. Outside of the monumental effort to construct JEDI that is ongoing at the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), GMAO have undertaken two areas of considerable effort. The talk will describe these efforts and highlight the main challenges that have been encountered. The first area of work is to implement the background error model from the existing data assimilation system into JEDI. The second is to validate the observing system in JEDI against the one in GSI, which has involved several new features being added to the observation operators in JEDI. While the longer-term plans involve trying to improve on the GSI in these two areas, GMAO is keen to have JEDI start from a trusted baseline. This is also key to implementing JEDI quickly so other priorities, such as increasing the number of model levels, can be easily worked on in parallel. GMAO is actively working on a framework to shepherd in the next generation coupled data assimilation system and model. As JEDI is implemented for the first time the plan is to ambitiously cycle through implementations, frequently bringing JEDI features to production. Details of these plans will be given in the talk and we will highlight key implementation and product milestones that we hope to achieve, as well as touch on the development environment that we will use to support frequent refreshing of the production system.

JEDI

Status of the NASA GMAO Observing System Simulation Experiment

An Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) is a pure modeling study used when actual observations are too expensive or difficult to obtain. OSSEs are valuable tools for determining the potential impact of new observing systems on numerical weather forecasts and for evaluation of data assimilation systems (DAS). An OSSE has been developed at the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO, Errico et al 2013). The GMAO OSSE uses a 13-month integration of the European Centre for Medium- Range Weather Forecasts 2005 operational model at T511/L91 resolution for the Nature Run (NR). Synthetic observations have been updated so that they are based on real observations during the summer of 2013. The emulated observation types include AMSU-A, MHS, IASI, AIRS, and HIRS4 radiance data, GPS-RO, and conventional types including aircraft, rawinsonde, profiler, surface, and satellite winds. The synthetic satellite wind observations are colocated with the NR cloud fields, and the rawinsondes are advected during ascent using the NR wind fields. Data counts for the synthetic observations are matched as closely as possible to real data counts, as shown in Figure 2. Errors are added to the synthetic observations to emulate representativeness and instrument errors. The synthetic errors are calibrated so that the statistics of observation innovation and analysis increments in the OSSE are similar to the same statistics for assimilation of real observations, in an iterative method described by Errico et al (2013). The standard deviations of observation minus forecast (xo-H(xb)) are compared for the OSSE and real data in Figure 3. The synthetic errors include both random, uncorrelated errors, and an additional correlated error component for some observational types. Vertically correlated errors are included for conventional sounding data and GPS-RO, and channel correlated errors are introduced to AIRS and IASI (Figure 4). HIRS, AMSU-A, and MHS have a component of horizontally correlated error. The forecast model used by the GMAO OSSE is the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5) with Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) DAS. The model version has been updated to v. 5.13.3, corresponding to the current operational model. Forecasts are run on a cube-sphere grid with 180 points along each edge of the cube (approximately 0.5 degree horizontal resolution) with 72 vertical levels. The DAS is cycled at 6-hour intervals, with 240 hour forecasts launched daily at 0000 UTC. Evaluation of the forecasting skill for July and August is currently underway. Prior versions of the GMAO OSSE have been found to have greater forecasting skill than real world forecasts. It is anticipated that similar forecast skill will be found in the updated OSSE.

OSSE

All-Sky Microwave Imager Data Assimilation at NASA GMAO

Efforts in all-sky satellite data assimilation at the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have been focused on the development of GSI configurations to assimilate all-sky data from microwave imagers such as the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Global Change Observation Mission-Water (GCOM-W) Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2). Electromagnetic characteristics associated with their wavelengths allow microwave imager data to be relatively transparent to atmospheric gases and thin ice clouds, and highly sensitive to precipitation. Therefore, GMAOs all-sky data assimilation efforts are primarily focused on utilizing these data in precipitating regions. The all-sky framework being tested at GMAO employs the GSI in a hybrid 4D-EnVar configuration of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) data assimilation system, which will be included in the next formal update of GEOS. This article provides an overview of the development of all-sky radiance assimilation in GEOS, including some performance metrics. In addition, various projects underway at GMAO designed to enhance the all-sky implementation will be introduced.

NWP

The OSSE Framework at the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO)

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has been developing an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) framework. The OSSE system is currently based on the Nature Run (NR) developed by GMAO called G5NR. The G5NR is currently being tested for use in the GMAO OSSE framework. Synthetic observations have been generated based on the G5NR fields, including conventional observations, GPS, and satellite radiances. These synthetic observations are ingested using the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation data assimilation system, with forecasts performed by the GEOS-5 model at 55 km/72L.

OSSE Framework

4D-Var Developement at GMAO

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Offce (GMAO) is currently using an IAU-based 3D-Var data assimilation system. GMAO has been experimenting with a 3D-Var-hybrid version of its data assimilation system (DAS) for over a year now, which will soon become operational and it will rapidly progress toward a 4D-EnVar. Concurrently, the machinery to exercise traditional 4DVar is in place and it is desirable to have a comparison of the traditional 4D approach with the other available options, and evaluate their performance in the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) DAS. This work will also explore the possibility for constructing a reduced order model (ROM) to make traditional 4D-Var computationally attractive for increasing model resolutions. Part of the research on ROM will be to search for a suitably acceptable space to carry on the corresponding reduction. This poster illustrates how the IAU-based 4D-Var assimilation compares with our currently used IAU-based 3D-Var.

GMAO

Development, Validation, and Application of OSSEs at NASA-GMAO

The GMAO OSSE framework has two general classes of applications. One is to estimate the potential improvements to weather forecasting and analysis by using new proposed instruments that are not as yet built or deployed. This exploits the simulated nature of the OSSE. The other is to assess various aspects of the GMAO data assimilation system. This exploits the availability of truth provided by the OSSE. Two examples of the first class of application will be offered. One concerns deployment of constellations of passive MW sounders on small CUBESATs placed in very low orbits. The other concern is increasing the frequency of radiosonde observations to 4-times daily at all current stations. Several examples of the second class will also be presented. One is an estimation of analysis error characteristics. Another is a comparison between covariances directly determined from explicitly known background errors and those estimated by computing differences between lagged forecasts using the NMC-method prior to tuning. A third is a comparison of effects of model and observation errors on analysis and forecast skill. The last is an examination of spectra of forecast errors in a study of predictability. This latter is an ongoing study.

OSSE

The GMAO ADVAR System: Preliminary Results

The Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-S) Data Assimilation System is now configurable to run strong constraint 4DVAR. The system combines the 4DVAR-capable Grid-point Statistical Interpolation analysis with the GEOS-S general circulation model and an early version of the tangent linear and adjoint models of the finite-volume hydrodynamics with simplified physics. The GMAO 4DVAR uses a Lanczos-based conjugate gradient algorithm in a nested resolution inner-loop setting. A range of tests and experiments will have been carried out by the time of the Symposium. Results on balance-related issues, resolution configuration, and choice of assimilation time window will be shown. A comparison with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) 3DVAR and a discussion of future directions of development will also be presented.

Todling, Ricardo

Aerosol Data Assimilation at GMAO

This presentation presents an overview of the aerosol data assimilation work performed at GMAO. The GMAO Forward Processing system and the biomass burning emissions from QFED are first presented. Then, the current assimilation of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), performed by means of the analysis splitting method is briefly described, followed by some results on the quality control of observations using a Neural Network trained using AERONET AOD. Some applications are shown such as the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 using the MERRA-2 aerosol dataset. Finally preliminary results on the EnKF implementation for aerosol assimilation are presented.

Splitting

Description of the GMAO OSSE for Weather Analysis Software Package: Version 3

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed software and products for conducting observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs) for weather analysis applications. Such applications include estimations of potential effects of new observing instruments or data assimilation techniques on improving weather analysis and forecasts. The GMAO software creates simulated observations from nature run (NR) data sets and adds simulated errors to those observations. The algorithms employed are much more sophisticated, adding a much greater degree of realism, compared with OSSE systems currently available elsewhere. The algorithms employed, software designs, and validation procedures are described in this document. Instructions for using the software are also provided.

OSSE

The OSSE Framework at the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO)

This abstract summarizes the OSSE framework developed at the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA/GMAO). Some of the OSSE techniques developed at GMAO including simulation of realistic observations, e.g., adding errors to simulated observations, are now widely used by the community to evaluate the impact of new observations on the weather forecasts. This talk presents some of the recent progresses and challenges in simulating realistic observations, radiative transfer modeling support for the GMAO OSSE activities, assimilation of OSSE observations into data assimilation systems, and evaluating the impact of simulated observations on the forecast skills.

Moradi, Isaac

The GMAO Hybrid Ensemble-Variational Atmospheric Data Assimilation System: Version 2.0

This document describes the implementation and usage of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Hybrid Ensemble-Variational Atmospheric Data Assimilation System (Hybrid EVADAS). Its aim is to provide comprehensive guidance to users of GEOS ADAS interested in experimenting with its hybrid functionalities. The document is also aimed at providing a short summary of the state-of-science in this release of the hybrid system. As explained here, the ensemble data assimilation system (EnADAS) mechanism added to GEOS ADAS to enable hybrid data assimilation applications has been introduced to the pre-existing machinery of GEOS in the most non-intrusive possible way. Only very minor changes have been made to the original scripts controlling GEOS ADAS with the objective of facilitating its usage by both researchers and the GMAO's near-real-time Forward Processing applications. In a hybrid scenario two data assimilation systems run concurrently in a two-way feedback mode such that: the ensemble provides background ensemble perturbations required by the ADAS deterministic (typically high resolution) hybrid analysis; and the deterministic ADAS provides analysis information for recentering of the EnADAS analyses and information necessary to ensure that observation bias correction procedures are consistent between both the deterministic ADAS and the EnADAS. The nonintrusive approach to introducing hybrid capability to GEOS ADAS means, in particular, that previously existing features continue to be available. Thus, not only is this upgraded version of GEOS ADAS capable of supporting new applications such as Hybrid 3D-Var, 3D-EnVar, 4D-EnVar and Hybrid 4D-EnVar, it remains possible to use GEOS ADAS in its traditional 3D-Var mode which has been used in both MERRA and MERRA-2. Furthermore, as described in this document, GEOS ADAS also supports a configuration for exercising a purely ensemble-based assimilation strategy which can be fully decoupled from its variational component. We should point out that Release 1.0 of this document was made available to GMAO in mid-2013, when we introduced Hybrid 3D-Var capability to GEOS ADAS. This initial version of the documentation included a considerably different state-of-science introductory section but many of the same detailed description of the mechanisms of GEOS EnADAS. We are glad to report that a few of the desirable Future Works listed in Release 1.0 have now been added to the present version of GEOS EnADAS. These include the ability to exercise an Ensemble Prediction System that uses the ensemble analyses of GEOS EnADAS and (a very early, but functional version of) a tool to support Ensemble Forecast Sensitivity and Observation Impact applications.

Todling, Ricardo

Near-Real Time Ocean-Atmosphere Skin Temperature as Part of NASA GMAO Atmospheric Data Assimilation System

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA, GSFC is developing an integrated Earth system analysis (IESA). Integral to this IESA are ocean-atmosphere interface states, such as the skin SST. Recently the GMAO's near-real time operational weather analysis and prediction system implemented an analysis for skin SST along with the meteorological analysis since Jan, 2017. The skin SST is modeled and constrained using infrared radiometric observations. This poster describes some of the details of this development, its impact on forecasts, current and future developments towards the inclusion of microwave data (e.g. GPM-GMI).

SST

NASA GMAO Integrated Earth System Analysis

An Integrated Earth System Analysis (IESA) is the only possible way to assimilate all the available observations of separate components of the earth system (atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land, constituents, etc) into a single consistent Coupled Data Assimilation System (CDAS). The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) is developing an IESA for Reanalysis in an incremental fashion by coupling different components- one at a time, for e.g., the MERRA-2 reanalysis coupled aerosol and meteorological data assimilation systems. Following a similar approach the ocean (including sea-ice) is being coupled to the atmosphere, starting with the air-sea interface. This presentation briefly outlines GMAO's reanalysis road map and summarizes our recent work in that direction.

Akella, Santha

Impact of Satellite Sea Surface Salinity Observations on ENSO Predictions from the GMAO S2S Forecast System

El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has far reaching global climatic impacts and so extending useful ENSO forecasts would be of great benefit for society. However, one key variable that has yet to be fully exploited within coupled forecast systems is accurate estimation of near-surface ocean density. Satellite Sea Surface Salinity (SSS), combined with temperature, help to identify ocean density changes and associated mixing near the ocean surface. We assess the impact of satellite SSS observations for improving near-surface dynamics within ocean analyses and how these impact dynamical ENSO forecasts using the NASA GMAO (Global Modeling and Assimilation Office) Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S_v2.1) coupled forecast system (Molod et al. 2018 - i.e. NASA's contribution to the NMME (National Multi-Model Ensemble) project). For all initialization experiments, all available along-track absolute dynamic topography and in situ observations are assimilated using the LETKF ( Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter) scheme similar to Penny et al., 2013. A separate reanalysis additionally assimilates Aquarius V5 (September 2011 to June 2015) and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) V4 (March 2015 to present) along-track data.We highlight the impact of satellite SSS on ocean reanalyses by comparing validation statistics of experiments that assimilate SSS versus our current prediction system that withholds SSS. We find that near-surface validation versus observed statistics for salinity are slightly degraded when assimilating SSS. This is an expected result due to known biases between SSS (measured by the satellite at approximately 1 centimeter) and in situ measurements (typically measured by Argo floats at 3 meters). On the other hand, a very encouraging result is that both temperature, absolute dynamic topography, and mixed layer statistics are improved with SSS assimilation. Previous work has shown that correcting near-surface density structure via gridded SSS assimilation can improve coupled forecasts. Here we present results of coupled forecasts that are initialized from the GMAO S2S reanalyses that assimilates/withholds along-track (L2) SSS. In particular, we contrast forecasts of the overestimated 2014 El Nino, the big 2015 El Nino, and the minor 2016 La Nina. For each of these ENSO scenarios, assimilation of satellite SSS improves the forecast validation. Improved SSS and density upgrades the mixed layer depth leading to more accurate coupled air/sea interaction.

Hackert, E.