A preliminary result of ICON MIGHTI data assimilation using the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere and ionosphere eXtension Data Assimilation Research Testbed system

Abstract:

This study aims to assess the impact of the assimilating thermospheric winds on the ionosphere and mesosphere in order to investigate the possibility of improving upper atmospheric weather predictability. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging (MIGHTI) provides meridional and zonal wind profile in the thermosphere. We expected these data can provide us a better thermospheric specification and further affect the mesosphere and ionosphere through an ensemble data assimilation. In the ensemble data assimilation, how to update the model state is highly related to the correlation between each variable which is computed statistically from a limited number of the model ensemble. Therefore, in order to get a reasonable correlation, this study focuses on assessing a reasonable impact region of the ICON MIGHTI wind profile by analyzing the data assimilation result. The ICON MIGHTI winds data is assimilated into the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere and ionosphere eXtension(WACCM-X)/ Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) system, and the impact region of ICON MIGHTI winds data is evaluated using an empirical localization function according to the observation error covariance and background error covariance before and after data assimilation.