Configurazione
The main characteristics of the the LETKF data assimilation system over the Euro-Mediterranean domain are:
- Domain and resolution: the system is running on the Mediterranean-European domain with 40 ensemble members plus a deterministic member, having a 0.0625° grid spacing (~7 km) and 49 vertical levels. The configuration is defined on a rotated regular grid, the coordinates of rotated north pole are (47.0,-10.0).
- Observations: the observational dataset operationally ingested comprises radiosonde ascents (RAOB), surface pressure observations from land and sea stations (SYNOP, SHIP, BUOY), manual and automatic aircraft observations, atmospheric motion vectors from Meteosat, European wind profilers, scatterometer winds from METOP A-B, NOAA/MetopA-B MSUA/MHS and NPP ATMS radiances.
- Lateral Boundary conditions: they are from IFS deterministic run perturbed using ECMWF-EPS.
- Surface perturbations: Stochastic perturbations of sea surface temperature.
- Model and sampling error: "Relaxation-to-prior spread" multiplicative inflation method according to Whitaker et al. 2012 and additive noise from scaled ECMWF EPS.
- Domain and resolution: the system is running on the Italian domain with 40 ensemble members plus a deterministic member, having a 0.02° grid spacing (~2.2 km) and 65 vertical levels. The configuration is defined on a rotated regular grid, the coordinates of rotated north pole are (47.0,-10.0).
- Observations: the observational dataset operationally ingested comprises radiosonde ascents (RAOB), surface pressure observations from land and sea stations (SYNOP, SHIP, BUOY), manual and automatic aircraft observations, atmospheric motion vectors from Meteosat, European wind profilers, scatterometer winds from METOP A-B, NOAA/MetopA-B MSUA/MHS and NPP ATMS radiances.
- Lateral Boundary conditions: they are from IFS deterministic run perturbed using ECMWF-EPS.
- Surface perturbations: Stochastic perturbations of sea surface temperature, soil moisture and temperature.
- Model and sampling error: "Relaxation-to-prior perturbation", multiplicative covariance inflation method and climatological additive covariance inflation .
Assimilated obs. | SYNOP (also non-GTS), SHIP, BUOY, RAOB (also descent), PILOT, WIND PROFILER/RADAR, AIREP, AMDAR, MODE-S, Meteosat AMV, Metop scatt. winds, NOAA-Metop AMSUA/MHS and NPP/NOAA ATMS radiances |
Assimilation cycle | 3 hours |
Analysis method | LETKF |
background | 3 hours COSMO forecasts |
Coverage | Mediterranean European region (Fig) |
Horizontal resolution | 0.0625° x 0.0625° |
Vertical resolution | 49 model levels |
Model and sampling error | "Relaxation-to-prior spread" multiplicative inflation method according to Whitaker et al. 2012 Additive noise from scaled ECMWF EPS pertubations |
Lateral and surface BCs perturbation | Lateral Boundary conditions from the most recent IFS deterministic run perturbed using ECMWF EPS Stochastically perturbed sea surface temperature (SST) |

The main characteristics of the high-resolution LETKF data assimilation system are:
Assimilated obs. | SYNOP (also non-GTS), SHIP, BUOY, RAOB (also descent, PILOT, WIND PROFILER/RADAR, AIREP, AMDAR, MODE-S, Meteosat AMV, Metop scatt. winds, NOAA-Metop AMSUA/MHS and NPP/NOAA ATMS radiances |
Assimilation cycle | 1 hour |
Analysis method | LETKF |
background | 1 hour COSMO forecasts |
Coverage | Italian domain |
Horizontal resolution | 0.02° x 0.02° |
Vertical resolution | 65 model levels |
Model and sampling error | "Relaxation-to-prior perturbation", multiplicative covariance inflation method and climatological additive covariance inflation |
Lateral and surface BCs perturbation | Lateral Boundary conditions from the most recent IFS deterministic run perturbed using ECMWF EPS Stochastically perturbed sea surface temperature (SST), soil moisture and temperature (WSO,TSO) |
HIGH-RESOLUTION LETKF ANALYSIS DOMAIN:
