The Use of EARS data at the Met Office

• Main Authors: S. J. English, A. M. Doherty, R. W. Saunders
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.520.3948

Recent studies at the Met Office suggest that using late ATOVS observations which do not normally arrive in time to be used in the main forecast runs of the global model can result in significant improvements to forecast accuracy in the Northern Hemisphere. This is because the late data results in data coverage gaps over the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Using locally-received observations and in particular those provided by the EUMETSAT ATOVS Retransmission Service (EARS) can help to fill in the data gaps. A trial combining the existing source of ATOVS observations from a global data provider with those obtained from the EARS network showed positive forecast benefit in the Northern Hemisphere Extratropics at forecast ranges from four to six days. Other applications exploiting the timeliness of EARS data are also discussed. 1.