Assimilation of wind speed and direction observations: a new formulation and results from idealised experiments

This article presents a new methodology for assimilating wind observations in their observed form of speed and direction, while taking into account both speed and direction error. It ensures the analysed speed and direction will be consistent with their background and observed values. The new formulation is implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting Data Assimilation system, and idealised experiments are used to demonstrate the potential benefit. The results suggest that analyses from the new formulation are more reasonable when compared to the conventional methodology. The forecasts generated in these idealised experiments also demonstrate the value of this new formulation. Preliminary results from real data experiments are in general agreement with results presented here, and they will be reported in a following article.