4DWX TAMDAR Evaluation

Objective

The purpose of this effort is to evaluate the Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting (TAMDAR) system data for the advancement of mesoscale weather analyses and short-term (0 - 48 hour) forecasts, and to explore opportunities for applying the data and the modeling system to various weather-critical governmental and industrial practices.

Description

Mesoscale (10 - 2000 km) meteorological data assimilation and prediction are challenging, partly due to the sparseness of observations, especially in the upper atmosphere. In the past 15 years, a number of measurement platforms, e.g. wind profilers, commercial aircraft reports, satellite measurements, and others, have been developed to enhance upper-air observations. Despite these advances, the present systems are not sufficient for mesoscale data assimilation and prediction. Recently, AirDat LLC., a Denver-based company, has been working with NASA, to develop and implement a new sensor, called TAMDAR.

The TAMDAR system uses the regional airlines to produce weather observations in the lower troposphere. These data provide more accurate and complete mesoscale weather information with much higher time and space density than other data sources. In collaboration with AirDat LLC., NCAR/RAL developed a TAMDAR-based mesoscale forecasting system. This system is built around the NCAR/ATEC (Army Test and Evaluation Command) real-time multiscale, rapid-cycling, four-dimensional data assimilation and forecast (RTFDDA) system. The NCAR-RTFDDA system has been employed to support AirDat's TAMDAR implementation and data operation through real-time data assimilation and forecasting. The system is also used as a tool for studying new data assimilation strategies that optimize the TAMDAR data impact on mesoscale NWP.