John Derber presented Daryl Kleist's work on assimilation of pseudo-MSLP observations for TCs. Pseudo-MSLP observations involve generating observations for every TC from tc_vitals files producing a single MSLP observation for each TC. For weaker storms, where observation minus forecast values are small, the storm position is reinforced. For stronger storms, which have larger observation minus forecast values, the storm position is reinforced and the storm is strengthened. It was shown that this method improved TC initial intensity and position in the GFS. Track was not vastly improved. Future work would include running more cases to assess impact on forecast tracks and storm environment.

Mingjing Tong presented her work on assimilation of airborne Doppler radar data with GSI for hurricane initialization and prediction. The impact of assimilating airborne radar radial velocity data is examined for two hurricane cases, Karen (2007) and Felix (2007). The new aspect of the analysis is the use of the flow-dependent anisotropic background error covariance, which produced better analysis than the isotropic one. The use of radar data showed some positive impact on intensity forecast, and no negative impact was found for track forecast if anisotropic error covariance is used. Future work includes more tuning and further analysis of results as well as running more cases for stronger and weaker storms.

Mingjing Tong presented her work on assimilation of airborne Doppler radar data with GSI for hurricane initialization and prediction. The impact of assimilating airborne radar radial velocity data is examined for two hurricane cases, Karen (2007) and Felix (2007). The new aspect of the analysis is the use of the flow-dependent anisotropic background error covariance, which produced better analysis than the isotropic one. The use of radar data showed some positive impact on intensity forecast, and no negative impact was found for track forecast if anisotropic error covariance is used. Future work includes more tuning and further analysis of results as well as running more cases for stronger and weaker storms.