The benefit of GPS zenith delay assimilation to high-resolution quantitative precipitation forecasts: A case-study from COPS IOP 9

The benefit of assimilating high spatial and temporal resolution Global Positioning System (GPS) zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD) observations within a high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) system is evaluated during IOP 9 of the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) campaign. In the framework of the international COPS field experiment, which took place from June to August 2007, a dense GPS network was deployed in the Vosges mountain region in eastern France and in the Black Forest region in southwestern Germany. GPS ZTD observations collected during the COPS field campaign, in addition to the European operational GPS data, are assimilated into the AROME/3D-Var system. We investigate the impact of assimilating these GPS ZTD observations on the forecast of convective systems that travelled over eastern France during the three days of COPS IOP 9 (18-20 July 2007). The results show it clear positive impact on short-range quantitative precipitation forecasts when GPS ZTD observations are assimilated. The impact is most important on 19 July 2007 (IOP 9b). The present study benefits from additional validation measurements collected during the COPS campaign. In particular we find that the assimilation of ZTD data induces changes in the low-to-middle tropospheric water vapour vertical structure that are consistent with water vapour measurements from radiosonde and airborne lidar. As most of the improvement is gained by assimilating GPS ZTD observations from the European operational GPS network, this study opens up encouraging horizons for the assimilation of GPS ZTD in new high-resolution operational NWP systems. Copyright (C) 2009 Royal Meteorological Society