Abstract
Assimilation of radar data is one of the key scientific challenges for numerical weather prediction of convective systems. Considerable progress has been made in recent years including retrieval of boundary layer winds from single-Doppler observations, assimilation of radar observations into convective-scale numerical models for explicit thunderstorm prediction, and assimilation of radar estimates of rainfall and wind into mesoscale models. However, the assimilation of radar data for weather prediction remains an important scientific area that demands further investigation. In this paper, the techniques that are currently being used and have demonstrated potential in radar data assimilation are presented. The progress on the research and applications is described and the future directions and challenges are outlined.
