Recent developments in the automatic checking of Earth system observations
Dahoui, Mohamed ; Bormann, Niels ; Isaksen, Lars ; McNally, Tony
For the last few years, an automatic data checking system has been used at ECMWF to monitor the quality and availability of observations processed by the atmospheric data assimilation system (Dahoui et al., 2014). Recently the system has been upgraded to add support for all Earth system observations processed by data assimilation systems running at ECMWF. This includes the 4D-Var system for the atmosphere, land surface data assimilation (LDAS) and ocean data assimilation (OCEAN5). The new framework also makes it easier to cross-check warnings from all components of the observing system and to robustly distinguish between data issues and limitations related to the model and/or data assimilation. Given the increasing size and diversity of the observing system, this tool is playing an essential role in flagging up observation issues and enabling the timely triggering of mitigating actions. On many occasions, the warnings generated by the automatic data checking system have been useful in highlighting unusual events and model or data assimilation limitations. An example is shown in Figure 1. In this article, we describe the most important features of the new system and provide a list of supported observation datasets. The automatic data checking system is partially supported by the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility for numerical weather prediction (NWP SAF). The system is chiefly used internally at ECMWF but important notifications are shared with selected users from EUMETSAT and the NWP SAF consortium.</p>
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