Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Doppler radar observations with high spatial and temporal resolution can effectively improve the description of small-scale structures in the initial condition and enhance the mesoscale and microscale model skills of numerical weather prediction (NWP). In this paper, Doppler radar radial velocity and reflectivity are simultaneously assimilated into a weather research and forecasting (WRF) model by a proper orthogonal-decomposition-based ensemble, three-dimensional variational assimilation method (referred to as PODEn3DVar), which therefore forms the PODEn3DVar-based radar assimilation system (referred to as WRF-PODEn3DVar). The main advantages of WRF-PODEn3DVar over the standard WRF-3DVar are that (1) the PODEn3DVar provides flow-dependent covariances through the evolving ensemble of short-range forecasts, and (2) the PODEn3DVar analysis can be obtained directly without an iterative process, which significantly simplifies the assimilation. Results from real data assimilation experiments with the WRF model show that WRF-PODEn3DVar simulation yields better rainfall forecasting than radar retrieval, and radar retrieval is better than the standard WRF-3DVar assimilation, probably because of the flow-dependence character embedded in the WRF-PODEn3DVar.