Assimilation of lidar planetary boundary layer height observations

Lidar backscatter and wind retrievals of the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) are assimilated into 22 hourly forecasts from the NASA Unified – Weather and Research Forecast (NU-WRF) model during the Plains Elevated Convection Convection at Night (PECAN) campaign on 11 July 2015 in Greensburg, Kansas, using error statistics collected from the model profiles to compute the necessary covariance matrices. Two separate forecast runs using different PBL physics schemes were employed, and comparisons with 5 independent sonde profiles were made for each run. Both of the forecast runs accurately predicted the PBLH and the state variable profiles within the planetary boundary layer during the early morning, and the assimilation had little impact during this time. In the late afternoon, the forecast runs showed decreased accuracy as the convective boundary layer developed. However, assimilation of the doppler lidar PBLH observations were found to improve the temperature, water vapor and velocity profiles relative to independent sonde profiles. The computed forecast error covariances between the PBLH and state variables were found to rise in the late afternoon, leading to the larger improvements in the afternoon. This work represents the first effort to assimilate PBLH into forecast states using ensemble methods.