Training course: Data assimilation

The aim of these sessions is to understand the role of land surface data assimilation on medium range weather forecasts.

We will give an overview of the different approaches used to assimilate land surface data and to initialise model variables in NWP. We will present the current observing systems and describe the land data assimilation structure within ECMWF system.

By the end of the session you should be able to:

• identify the different observations used for snow and soil moisture data assimilation
• define land surface data assimilation approaches used for NWP
• describe the role of land surface data assimilation on medium-range weather forecasts