Abstract
Over the last few years, satellite data have progressively become a major (if not the predominant) source of information assimilated in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. This has been made possible thanks to a substantial enhancement of the remote sensing instruments measuring various atmospheric quantities but also largely to the improvements in data assimilation techniques to better exploit the information contained in such data. The advantage of satellite data is that they provide a uniform spatial and temporal coverage of the atmosphere. This advantage is however balanced by a general poor vertical resolution of the instruments currently used, and the difficulty to handle clouds, precipitations and surface contributions to the information content of the data. The future improvements of NWP models and a better handling of new observing techniques (radio-occultation, passive limb soundings, active sensors) in data assimilation schemes may overcome some of these limitations.
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Thépaut, JN. (2003). Assimilation of Remote Sensing Observations in Numerical Weather Prediction. In: Swinbank, R., Shutyaev, V., Lahoz, W.A. (eds) Data Assimilation for the Earth System. NATO Science Series, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0029-1_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0029-1_19
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