Recent Work Using Satellite Winds at the German Weather Service
Wind measurements derived from geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites are one of the most important data sources for global and regional NWP: Currently, the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) uses satellite winds (AMVs) from five geostationary and several polar-orbiting satellites. Additionally, scatterometer wind observations derived from the ASCAT instrument on board of Metop A/B/C are used operationally. In August 2018 the first space-bourne Doppler wind lidar (Aeolus) was launched, providing globally distributed profiles of horizontal line-of-side (HLOS) wind information. One and a half year after the first winds arrived at the observation data base of the DWD, they were actively used operationally in our assimilation and forecasting system.
Monitoring of satellite wind vectors, product upgrades and the evaluation of new wind products, which have the potential to improve the quality of analyses and forecasts, are an ongoing task at DWD. This presentation will give an overview of recent progress in the assimilation of AMV and scatterometer data. Since the last wind workshop, several new and upgrade AMV and scatterometer wind products became available. Additionally, further experiments using the HLOS winds from Aeolus showed large impacts on all scales especially in the Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere.
Several quality and impact studies using new AMV and scatterometer winds like the switch from Himawari-8 to Himawari-9, the LEO-GEO winds or the quality of the GOES 18 winds will be discussed.
