Estimating Observation Error Statistics Using a Robust Filter Method for Data Assimilation

摘要

For the data assimilation algorithms, the observation error covariance plays an important role, because they control the weight that is given to the model forecast and to the observation in the solution, i.e., the analysis. In order to easily calculate, we often assume observation to be a diagonal matrix, however, the observation errors are correlated to the state and have a certain dependence on time, such as certain observing types which are remotely sensed. In this work, we obtain the time-dependent and correlated observation error by the method of observation error estimation in the data assimilation system. We combine the ensemble time-local H-infinity filter (EnTLHF) with an estimate of observation error covariance matrix, named ensemble time-local H-infinity filter with observation error covariance estimation (EnTLHF-R). In the experiment, a classical nonlinear Lorenz-96 model to evaluate the performance of new method is used. The results show that the robust filtering with observation error estimation is more accurate, more robust, and the filtering is more stable.