Three-Dimensional Variational Data Analysis to Retrieve Thermodynamical and Dynamical Fields from Various Nested Wind Measurements

Abstract

The present study is devoted to a new analysis of wind measurements from dropsonding and/or radiosonding of Doppler information from multiple Doppler radar scanning and of other wind measurements (sodar, dynamical sensors on board aircraft, and instruments at ground) aimed at retrieving three-dimensional thermodynamical and dynamical fields both in clear air and in precipitating areas of mesoscale phenomena. This analysis, well suited to assimilate data from differing platforms specified at differing spatial/temporal resolutions, is based on the analytical and variational concept of the Multiple Analytical Doppler (MANDOP) analysis and thus is an extension of it. This new analysis presents many advantages, including the same as MANDOP and others well adapted for the verification or the initialization of a mesoscale cloud model. An application to simulated and to real data extracted from the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean?Atmosphere Response Experiment database is presented in the paper.