1. Introduction
The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF; Evensen 1994) is an advanced data assimilation method and approximates the Kalman filter (KF; Kalman 1960) by estimating the forecast error covariance from a limited number of samples or ensemble forecasts. In recent EnKF studies using atmospheric models, the ensemble size was usually limited to about 100 to balance the accuracy of the EnKF and the model’s computational complexity such as its resolution and physics schemes.
The limited ensemble size causes spurious sampling errors, which contaminate the estimates of the background error covariance and degrade the analysis accuracy. Therefore, covariance localization plays an essential role in limiting the influence of the observations within a prescribed distance and reduces the impact of spurious sampling errors between distant locations (e.g., Houtekamer and Mitchell 1998; Hamill et al. 2001). The choice of the localization functional shape is a tuning parameter, and this study employs two types: the step function, which becomes zero at a certain distance, and the Gaussian function, which is forced to be zero at and beyond a distance of 2(10/3)1/2 standard deviations (or simply SD hereafter) from the center of localization. If we fit the Gaussian function to the widely used Gaspari–Cohn function with compact support (Gaspari and Cohn 1999), the Gaspari–Cohn function becomes zero at this distance. In this study, the localization scale is defined as the distance at which the localization function becomes zero (i.e., the radius of influence). Although optimal localization was explored theoretically (Perianez et al. 2014; Flowerdew 2015; Ménétrier et al. 2015a,b), previous studies chose the localization scale primarily based on the ensemble size and model resolution (Table 1). Higher-resolution models resolve smaller-scale phenomena and generally require a shorter localization scale. If the ensemble size is smaller, the localization scale also becomes shorter to avoid the deleterious influence of the sampling errors. Such narrow localization may limit exceedingly the number of observations assimilated at each grid point for high-resolution models. To increase the effective local number of observations, multiscale localization methods have been explored (Zhang et al. 2009; Rainwater and Hunt 2013; Miyoshi and Kondo 2013; Kondo et al. 2013).
Combinations of the ensemble size, model resolution, and localization scale from previous studies.
Miyoshi et al. (2014, hereafter MKI14) increased the ensemble size up to 10 240, two orders of magnitude greater than the typical choice of about 100, and investigated long-range error-correlation structures with an intermediate AGCM known as the Simplified Parameterizations, Primitive Equation Dynamics (SPEEDY) model (Molteni 2003) using the local ensemble transform Kalman filter (LETKF; Hunt et al. 2007). More recently, Miyoshi et al. (2015) ran a similar 10 240-member LETKF experiment for the real atmosphere using the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM; Satoh et al. 2008, 2014) and real-world observations. MKI14 ran a 3-week experiment involving the 10 240-member SPEEDY–LETKF with 7303-km Gaussian-function horizontal localization (SD = 2000 km) and found that the horizontal correlation structures extended at continental or even planetary scales. It is still an open question as to what would be the impact of the long-range error correlations on data assimilation. Although with 10 240 members it may be better to remove localization, a larger ensemble demands a larger memory space. Running a 10 240-member LETKF without localization caused memory overflow in MKI14’s experiments. Therefore, MKI14 had to apply relatively broad 7303-km Gaussian-function localization, which is the maximum localization scale in MKI14’s environment, to avoid memory overflow.
In this study, we improve the LETKF code of MKI14 and save memory, so that we can remove covariance localization completely with 10 240 members. We aim to compare the accuracy of the analysis and subsequent 7-day forecasts by investigating sensitivities to the ensemble size from 20 to 10 240 and to different localization settings using the Gaussian function and the local patch (Ott et al. 2004) provided by the step function. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the experiments will reveal for the first time the impact of continental- to planetary-scale error correlations on the analysis and forecast. Such long-range error correlations have not been considered explicitly in meteorological data assimilations thus far.
Section 2 describes the LETKF system with the SPEEDY model. Section 3 describes the experimental design, and section 4 presents the results with along with some discussion. In section 5 we perform explicit eigenvalue decomposition of the forecast error covariance matrix estimated by 10 240 ensemble members. Finally, section 6 provides our conclusions.
2. SPEEDY–LETKF system
The SPEEDY model is an intermediate atmospheric general circulation model with the primitive equations dynamical core, and the T30–L7 resolution corresponds to 96 × 48 grid points horizontally and 7 levels vertically, totaling 133 632 prognostic variables. The SPEEDY model has been used in a number of studies on data assimilation (e.g., Miyoshi 2005; Greybush et al. 2011; Miyoshi 2011; Miyoshi and Kondo 2013; Kondo et al. 2013). The SPEEDY model has simplified forms of physical parameterization schemes such as large-scale condensation, convection, clouds, short- and longwave radiation, surface fluxes and vertical diffusion.
MKI14 ran a 3-week-long 10 240-member SPEEDY–LETKF experiment with a 7303-km localization scale (i.e., the Gaussian localization function with SD = 2000 km), using 4608 nodes of the Japanese flagship K computer. The K computer has 88 128 nodes with its peak performance of 10 petaflops, which ranked number 5 in the top-500 list as of June 2016 (http://www.top500.org/lists/2016/06/). As already mentioned in the introduction, although MKI14 had to apply localization to avoid memory overflow, in this study the SPEEDY–LETKF code of MKI14 was improved, so that we could avoid memory overflow even without localization at all.
3. Experimental settings
The experiments in this study assume the perfect model following MKI14. The nature run is initialized at 0000 UTC 1 January by the standard atmosphere at rest (i.e., no wind), and the first year is considered to be a spinup period. The experimental period is 60 days from 0000 UTC 1 January in the second year of the nature run. The observational error standard deviations are fixed to 1.0 m s−1, 1.0 K, 0.1 g kg−1, and 1.0 hPa for horizontal wind components, temperature, specific humidity, and surface pressure, respectively. The observations are simulated by adding independent Gaussian random numbers to the nature run every 6 h at the radiosonde-like locations (cf. section 4; Fig. 5, cross marks) for all seven vertical levels, but the observations of specific humidity are simulated from the bottom to the fourth model level (about 500 hPa). The number of observations is 10 816 every 6 h, which is very similar to the ensemble size of 10 240. Six-hourly data assimilation cycles are performed.
First, the NOLOC experiment, standing for no localization, is performed using 10 240 ensemble members without localization at all, either in the horizontal or in the vertical. NOLOC is equivalent to the global ETKF theoretically, and an ETKF implementation may be much more efficient than the LETKF option. However, for a pure comparison, we use the same LETKF code with different localization settings even for NOLOC. To investigate the performance of NOLOC, three additional experiments are performed with 20, 80, and 320 members, which are often used experimentally or operationally, and they are called M20, M80, and M320, respectively (Table 2). The horizontal localization scales of M20 and M80 with the Gaussian function are manually tuned to be 2556 and 5112 km (SD = 700 and 1400 km), respectively. The localization scale of M320 is fixed at 7303 km (SD = 2000 km) following MKI14. The vertical localization scales for M20, M80, and M320 are chosen to be SD = 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 in the natural logarithm of the pressure coordinate for the Gaussian function, respectively. Applying the tight vertical localization is essential for M20, as was the case in the previous studies using the SPEEDY–LETKF system (e.g., Miyoshi 2005, 2011; Kang et al. 2012). These experiments are initialized at 0000 UTC 1 January by the initial ensemble states randomly chosen from the long-term nature runs in December and January after December of the ninth year. For all experiments, the adaptive covariance inflation method of Miyoshi (2011) is applied.
Experimental settings for M20, M80, M320, and NOLOC.
Next, to investigate the sensitivity to the ensemble size while fixing the localization, we ran five experiments with 80, 320, 1280, 5120, and 10 240 members with 7303-km (SD = 2000 km) Gaussian localization horizontally but without vertical localization (Table 3). The experiment with 10 240 members is called LG7, which stands for localization, Gaussian, and the radius of 7303 km; the other experiments are named simply for their ensemble sizes: 80, 320, 1280, and 5120. These experiments are initialized with the first guess of NOLOC at 0000 UTC 24 January, and run for 37 days until the end of the experiment period. More precisely, the initial ensemble perturbations are chosen from NOLOC, and the initial ensemble mean of each experiment is the same as that of NOLOC.
Experimental settings for 80, 320, 1280, 5120, LG7, and NOLOC. NOLOC is the same as in Table 2.
In addition, to investigate the pure impact of distant observations, we perform three additional experiments (Table 4) with 10 240 members using the local patch (Ott et al. 2004). The radii of the circular patches are chosen to be 2000, 4000, and 7303 km, corresponding to 1 and 2 SDs and the maximum range of LG7, respectively. We call these LP2, LP4, and LP7, respectively, standing for local patch and their corresponding radii. Figure 1 shows the localization function and local patch sizes for the four experiments including LG7. These experiments are initialized in the same way as LG7.
Experimental settings for LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC. LG7 and NOLOC are the same as in Table 3.
Localization function for LG7 (purple) and the local patch sizes for LP2 (blue), LP4 (green), and LP7 (yellow). In LG7, the Gaussian function is used and is 0 at and beyond 7303 km. In LP2, LP4, and LP7, the localization radii are 2000, 4000, and 7303 km, respectively.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
Finally, we perform 7-day forecasts for a month from 0000 UTC 1 February to 1800 UTC 1 March for M80, M320, LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC. The forecasts are initialized at the ensemble mean states.
4. Results and discussion
a. Analysis RMSE and ensemble spread
NOLOC shows the most accurate analyses among all of the experiments (Figs. 2–4, red curves). In Fig. 2, increasing the ensemble size consistently improves the initial spinup and the asymptotic analysis RMSE, while NOLOC yields the smallest RMSE. Figure 3 shows the sensitivity to the ensemble size when the localization settings are fixed (Table 3). As the ensemble size is increased, the improvement is consistent but becomes smaller. The improvement from 80 to 320 is the largest, and the improvements beyond 1280 members are consistent but very small. Experiment 80 shows an increasing trend, even at the end of the period of investigation, and is expected to reach the asymptotic level, as shown in Fig. 2 (i.e., about 0.5 m s−1 for zonal wind U, 0.17 K for temperature T, 0.1 g kg−1 for specific humidity Q, and 0.3 hPa for surface pressure Ps). The improvement from 5120 to 10 240 members is a almost invisible. The RMSE of NOLOC is clearly the smallest. Namely, when the ensemble size is relatively small, increasing the ensemble size helps improve the analysis accuracy. When the ensemble size is larger, localization is more important.
Time series of the global-mean analysis RMSEs for (a) zonal wind (m s−1) at the fourth model level (~500 hPa), (b) temperature (K) at the second model level (~850 hPa), (c) specific humidity (g kg−1) at the lowest level (~925 hPa), and (d) surface pressure (hPa). Gray, black, purple, and red lines indicate M20, M80, M320, and NOLOC, respectively.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
As in Fig. 2, but after 21 January for the experiments with different ensemble sizes—80 (black), 320 (purple), 1280 (blue), 5120 (greenish-yellow), LG7 (pink), and NOLOC (red)—with localization settings fixed. The experiments were initialized on 24 Jan with subsets of 10 240 ensemble perturbations of NOLOC recentered around the ensemble mean of NOLOC.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
As in Fig. 3, but for the experiments with different localization settings—LG7 (pink), LP2 (blue), LP4 (green), LP7 (greenish-yellow), and NOLOC (red)–and with the ensemble size fixed at 10 240.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
Figure 4 shows the sensitivity to localization with the ensemble size fixed at 10 240. All of the experiments seem to reach the asymptotic levels after 15 February. LP2 has the worst results, and LP4 and LG7 show similar RMSEs, although LG7 includes much more distant observations than LP4. LP7 is closer to NOLOC, but with consistently larger RMSEs. The differences come purely from localization. Namely, it turns out that faraway observations beyond the 4000-km or 7303-km localization radius have important information for improving the analysis accuracy.
Figure 5 shows the spatial distributions of the analysis RMSE. If we compare M20, M80, M320, and NOLOC, the analysis RMSE of NOLOC is surprisingly small, less than 0.1 hPa in large areas mostly in the NH, and about 0.3 hPa over the tropics and other limited regions with large errors (Figs. 5a,b,c,h). For reference, the observations were available only at the locations indicated by crosses with the error standard deviation being 1.0 hPa. We find that the error in the extratropics is reduced significantly by increasing the ensemble size, but in the tropics, the error reduction is not as effective.
Spatial distributions of the time-mean analysis RMSE for surface pressure (hPa) from 0000 UTC 1 Feb to 1800 UTC 1 Mar for (a) M20, (b) M80, (c) M320, (d) LG7, (e) LP2, (f) LP4, (g) LP7, and (h) NOLOC. The × symbols indicate the observation stations.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
The analysis RMSEs for LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC are very similar to each other (Figs. 5d,f,g,h). However, over the Southern Ocean, especially around 220°–260° longitude, where the observations are sparse, LG7, LP4, and LP7 show analysis RMSEs reaching about 0.4 hPa, larger than about 0.3 hPa found for NOLOC. Although LG7 has a localization radius of 7303 km and includes many more observations than LP4, LG7 is close to LP4 (Figs. 4 and 5d,f). This suggests that the 7303-km Gaussian function localization extract almost the same amount of information from the observations as the 4000-km local patch. Namely, the effective number of observations is less than the actual number of observations in LG7 because the observations weigh less toward the edges of the localization radius, so that the available information from the observations is reduced. Moreover, we find more significant differences between LP2 and NOLOC (Figs. 5e,h). Over the Southern Ocean, LP2 shows even larger analysis RMSEs of about 1.0 hPa. These differences come purely from localization. Namely, faraway observations beyond 2000 km provide important information for improving the analysis over the sparsely observed areas.
Focusing on the relative magnitude of the analysis RMSEs and the ensemble spread (Figs. 5–7), we find that the ensemble spreads of the best four experiments in Figs. 4 and 5 (i.e., LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC) correspond well to the RMSEs after the spinup. In particular, NOLOC shows almost perfect correspondence between the RMSE and ensemble spread. This suggests that the adaptive covariance inflation method performs stably and adjusts the ensemble spread appropriately. Tables 2–4 include the global average values of the adaptive inflation parameters at the lowest model level.
As in Fig. 5, but showing the ensemble spreads instead of the RMSEs.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
Column graph of analysis RMSEs (bars) and ensemble spreads (× symbols) of (left to right) M20, M80, M320, LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC for the global mean (GL), Northern Hemisphere (NH), tropics (TR), and Southern Hemisphere (SH).
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
b. Horizontal error correlations
Faraway observations are assimilated based on the error correlations estimated from the ensemble perturbations. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the spatial error correlation patterns. Figure 8 illustrates the spatial error autocorrelations from a single-point observation at the yellow star for LG7 after applying 7303-km Gaussian localization (left) and NOLOC (right) at 0000 UTC 24 January. The blue, green, and greenish-yellow curves correspond to 2000, 4000, and 7303 km from the yellow star, respectively, and the inside of each curve corresponds to the autocorrelation patterns of LP2, LP4, and LP7. These autocorrelations correspond to a part of the background error covariance matrix or analysis increment patterns, and also reflect the range of the observational impacts. The autocorrelation patterns tend to have the longest scale for NOLOC, especially for specific humidity (Q). Similar continental-scale correlation structures were reported in MKI14. Bishop et al. (2003) also showed a long-range signal in the analysis increment by assimilating a single observation. The zonally elongated wave patterns are greatly shortened in LG7 as a result of localization. Although the correlations of LG7 are mostly concentrated within a 2000-km range, the LG7 has a similar analysis accuracy to LP4, not LP2. The correlation of LP2 is suddenly cut at 2000 km, but LG7 has a long-range correlation though the correlation beyond the 2000-km range is smaller than 0.1. The localization radii of LP4 and LP7 capture almost the entire correlation patterns of NOLOC, although for humidity the localization radius of LP4 seems to be insufficient. This agrees with the results that the analysis RMSEs of LP7 are very similar to those of NOLOC but with slight degradations. We would expect that LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC effectively use observational information from distant observations, and assimilating such faraway information would help improve the analysis.
Spatial patterns of 10 240-member ensemble-based autocorrelations from the yellow star (50.099°N, 168.75°W) at 0000 UTC 24 Jan for (left) LG7and (right) NOLOC for (from top to bottom) zonal wind (U), meridional wind (V), temperature (T), specific humidity (Q), and surface pressure (Ps). Except for surface pressure, the fourth model level (~500 hPa) is shown. Blue, green, and greenish-yellow curves indicate 2000, 4000, and 7303 km from the yellow star, respectively.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
We further investigate the correlation length scales in different regions. When the ensemble size is small, the peaks of the analysis RMSEs > 1.0 hPa are located over the sparsely observed areas (Figs. 5a–c). By contrast, NOLOC shows the peaks of the analysis RMSEs ~ 0.3 hPa mainly over the tropics (Fig. 5h). The analysis RMSEs of the tropics are relatively similar in all of the experiments (Fig. 5). Hence, we may hypothesize that the tropics tend to have narrower correlations, and that it is harder to improve the results by assimilating faraway observations. Figure 9 shows the autocorrelations similar to Fig. 8, but from two different points in the extratropics and tropics. The correlation structures over the extratropics are widely spread, and the correlations reach 4000 km in certain directions. By contrast, the correlations over the tropics stay mostly within 3000 (2000) km for the zonal wind (surface pressure). On average, the extratropics show clearly longer-range correlations than do the tropics (Fig. 10). The slight improvements over the tropics may be related to the convectively dominated tropical dynamics, so that the correlation ranges tend to be shorter.
Spatial patterns of 10 240-member ensemble-based autocorrelations from the center yellow stars at (a),(c) 46.389°N, 157.5°W and (b),(d) 1.856°N, 157.5°W at 0000 UTC 1 Feb for (a),(b) zonal wind at the fourth model level (~500 hPa) and (c),(d) surface pressure of NOLOC. Black circles show the distance (km) from the yellow star at every 1000 km. Coastlines and latitude–longitude lines are also shown by black and gray lines, respectively.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
As in Fig. 8, but averaged for a month from 0000 UTC 1 Feb to 1800 UTC 1 Mar.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
c. Analysis increments
To investigate how data assimilation with and without localization reduces the actual error, we focus on the differences in the analysis increments. The analysis increments are the corrections made to the first guess to obtain the analysis. Figure 11 shows the analysis increments for the meridional wind at 0000 UTC 24 January. Here, the 80- and 320-member ensemble perturbations are randomly selected from the background ensemble perturbations of NOLOC, while the ensemble mean stays the same as in NOLOC. LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC use identical background ensembles. Namely, the differences in the analysis increments are caused purely by localization and the ensemble size. The analysis increments of LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC generally resemble each other, but are of different magnitudes (Figs. 11c–g). By contrast, 80 and 320 members have generally much smaller analysis increments (Figs. 11a,b). We focus on the areas surrounded by boxes 1 and 2, where we find relatively large analysis increments. All 10 240-member experiments capture the zonal wave pattern in area 1, which reduces the background error (Fig. 11h). The wave patterns are stronger in LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC, and weaker in LP2. LP2 misses the signal over the western part of area 1 (Fig. 11d). Similar discussions can be applied to area 2. In the western part of area 2, LP2 does not create anything. As a result, relatively large analysis errors remain in LP2. By contrast, LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC create large amplitudes of the analysis increments, although the analysis increment of LG7 is relatively weak. Therefore, longer-range localization has a large impact across the sparsely observed areas by assimilating faraway observations, whereas even if the localization radius is long, as in LG7, the Gaussian function localization reduces the observation impact. Namely, Fig. 11 suggests that the amount of observation information for LG7 be lower than for LP4, although the Gaussian function localization with SD = 2000 km has the same range as LP7.
Analysis increments of meridional wind field (m s−1) at the lowest model level (~925 hPa) at 0000 UTC 24 Jan for (a) M80, (b) M320, (c) LG7, (d) LP2, (e) LP4, (f) LP7, and (h) NOLOC. (g) As in (h), but showing the background error. The × symbols indicate the observation stations. Boxes labeled 1 and 2 are the focus areas and are discussed in the text.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
d. Forecast RMSE
It is important to investigate if the improvement in the analysis persists in the medium-range forecasts. Figure 12 shows the 7-day forecast RMSEs averaged over 116 forecast cases from 0000 UTC 1 February to 1800 UTC 1 March. Here, the analysis ensemble mean is used as the set of initial conditions. For all variables, the curves never cross except for LG7 and LP4, which often overlap each other and are obscured. Namely, the order persists from the initial time throughout the entire 7-day forecasts, and LG7 and LP4 are indistinguishable. If we compare 80 and 10 240 members, the 1-day forecast RMSEs of M80 are roughly equal to the 5-day forecast RMSEs of NOLOC. This suggests a potential advantage of having a large ensemble and considering long-range forecast error correlations, but the results would be overly optimistic because of the assumptions such as the perfect model, perfectly known observation error statistics, and the low-resolution simplified model. LP2 is significantly worse than LG7, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC for longer forecast leads.
Global mean 7-day forecast RMSEs averaged from 0000 UTC 1 Feb to 1800 UTC 1 Mar for (a) zonal wind (m s−1) at the fourth model level (~500 hPa), (b) temperature (K) at the second model level (~850 hPa), (c) specific humidity (g kg−1) at the lowest level (~925 hPa), and (d) surface pressure (hPa). Black, purple, pink, blue, green, greenish-yellow, and red curves indicate M80, M320, LG7, LP2, LP4, LP7, and NOLOC, respectively. LG7 and LP4 often overlap each other and are obscured.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
5. Eigenvalue decomposition of the forecast error covariance matrix
NOLOC performed stably and showed the smallest analysis error although the ensemble size of 10 240 is less than a tenth of the degrees of freedom of the SPEEDY model (133 632). This suggests that the 133 632 × 133 632 forecast error covariance matrix 
Using the efficient eigenvalue decomposition software EigenExa (Imamura et al. 2011), MKI14 reported the acceleration of the computations of the 10 240-member LETKF by a factor of 8. Here, we take advantage of EigenExa and solve the eigenvalue decomposition of 
Figure 13 shows the eigenvalue spectrum of 
Eigenvalue spectrum (black curve) for the forecast error covariance matrix of NOLOC at 0000 UTC 1 Mar. Red and blue lines indicate e−1/1300 and e−1/1500, respectively.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
The first 10 eigenvectors for zonal wind at the fourth model level are shown in Fig. 14. The first eigenvector (Fig. 14a) corresponds to a mode with the largest variance among all 10 240 ensemble perturbations. The signals from the first to fifth eigenvectors mainly appear from the eastern Pacific to the Southern Ocean, where the observations are sparse. Namely, the background error tends to grow over the sparsely observed area; also, the eigenvector structures mainly correspond to the background ensemble spread. These results are consistent with findings presented in section 4a. The wave patterns like Fig. 8 appear in the sixth and seventh eigenvectors over the south Indian Ocean (Figs. 14f,g), and other variables reveal similar wave patterns (not shown). Moreover, some eigenvectors show long-range structures even beyond continental scales (e.g., Figs. 14f,g,i). This also suggests the need for broader-scale localization beyond continents.
(a)–(j) The first 10 eigenvectors for zonal wind at the fourth model level at 0000 UTC 1 Mar.
Citation: Monthly Weather Review 144, 12; 10.1175/MWR-D-15-0388.1
6. Conclusions
In this study, covariance localization was removed completely from the SPEEDY–LETKF experiments with 10 240 members, and the impact of including distant observations on the analyses and forecasts was investigated in depth, for the first time to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The results showed that the analysis without localization was greatly improved for all variables mainly over the sparsely observed areas because of effectively assimilating faraway observations. Namely, the full global error covariance effectively extracts the observational information from not only nearby observations but also distant ones. Based on the large-ensemble results, we could design a new type of localization to effectively use a small ensemble, and investigate how many ensemble members would be necessary to include important covariance structures. These will be more relevant to the real-world applications as running 10 240 ensemble members will not be the practical choice in the foreseeable future.
In general, the local patch with the step function may not be a good choice since the discontinuity would be problematic. Oczkowski et al. (2005), Kuhl et al. (2007), and Satterfield and Szunyogh (2010, 2011) discussed the ensemble E dimension using the ensemble size up to about 150. This study is somewhat different from previous examples because of the orders of magnitude larger ensemble size, which allowed us to apply the larger-scale local patches and Gaussian function localization without severe problems.
The ensemble size of 10 240 is very close to 10 816, the number of observations, so that the ensemble nearly spans the observation space. This is not usually the case in the real atmosphere, where the number of observations is much larger than 105. It is an open question if no localization is a better choice when the ensemble can span only a fraction of the observation space. This should be investigated in future research efforts.
This study focused on the impact of localization and different ensemble sizes. Recently, using a hybrid covariance matrix between climatological component and ensemble-based flow-dependent component became a viable choice in the operational systems (Hamill and Snyder 2000; Wang et al. 2013; Kleist and Ide 2015; Clayton et al. 2013). It would be an interesting future issue to investigate the effects of including climatological components to represent the large scale covariance structure, compared with the flow-dependent covariance structure estimated with the large ensemble.
The experiments in this study were implemented under the perfect model scenario and were only simulations, not representing the real atmosphere. Also, the SPEEDY model is an intermediate AGCM with simplified physics and resolves only up to 30 horizontal wavenumbers with seven vertical levels. Higher-resolution models represent finer-scale structures, and the eigenvalue spectrum should be less steep. Hence, the rank of the background error covariance matrix would be larger, and a larger ensemble size would be necessary. Yet, Miyoshi et al. (2015) reported that their 10 240-member LETKF experiments for the real atmosphere also showed long-range error correlations with real-world observations using the state-of-the-art NICAM at 112-km resolution with 40 vertical levels. An important next step would be to investigate if including distant observations helps improve the real-world NWP.
Acknowledgments
The EigenExa software (http://www.aics.riken.jp/labs/lpnctrt/EigenExa_e.html) plays an essential role in solving the eigenvalues for 10 240 × 10 240 dense real symmetric matrices and is kindly provided by T. Imamura of Large-Scale Parallel Numerical Computing Technology Research Team, RIKEN AICS. The SPEEDY–LETKF code is publicly available online (http://code.google.com/p/miyoshi/). We are grateful to the members of the Data Assimilation Research Team, RIKEN AICS, for fruitful discussions. Results were, in part, obtained by using the K computer at the RIKEN AICS through Proposals ra000015 and hp150019. This study was partly supported by CREST, JST, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant JP16K17806.
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