Exploring the footprint representation of microwave radiance observations in an Arctic limited-area data assimilation system

Abstract. The microwave radiances are key observations, especially over data-sparse regions, for operational data assimilation in numerical weather prediction (NWP). An often applied simplification is that these observations are used as point measurements; however, the satellite field of view may cover many grid points of high-resolution models. Therefore, we examine a solution in high-resolution data assimilation to better account for the spatial representation of the radiance observations. This solution is based on a footprint operator implemented and tested in the variational assimilation scheme of the AROME-Arctic (Application of Research to Operations at MEsoscale – Arctic) limited-area model. In this paper, the design and technical challenges of the microwave radiance footprint operator are presented. In particular, implementation strategies, the representation of satellite field-of-view ellipses, and the emissivity retrieval inside the footprint area are discussed. Furthermore, the simulated brightness temperatures and the sub-footprint variability are analysed in a case study, indicating particular areas where the use of the footprint operator is expected to provide significant added value. For radiances measured by the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) sensors, the standard deviation of the observation minus background (OmB) departures is computed over a short period in order to compare the statistics of the default and the implemented footprint observation operator. For all operationally used AMSU-A and MHS tropospheric channels, it is shown that the standard deviation of OmB departures is reduced when the footprint operator is applied. For AMSU-A radiances, the reduction is around 1 % for high-peaking channels and about 4 % for low-peaking channels. For MHS data, this reduction is somewhere between 1 %–2 % by the footprint observation operator.