Data assimilation and its application

The ERCIM track “Data assimilation and its application” will take place during the 3rd World Conference on “Computational Statistics & Data Analysis” which will be held in Limassol, Cyprus, 28-31 October 2005.

Observation data are becoming both more reliable and more easily available. It is evident that the best insight into a complex system will be achieved when observational and theoretical knowledge are combined by objective methods as it is done through application of advanced data assimilation techniques. Ongoing research and development in this field has shown that the quality of the output of comprehensive models is considerably increased through advanced data assimilation. Improvements can be achieved in several different ways:

• One can increase the quality of the initial data used in the treatment of the models.
• One can improve the quality of input data used continuously during the run of the model under consideration (as, for example, emission data).
• One can use data assimilation to improve the chemical and physical mechanisms used in the mathematical formulation of the models.

Such tasks lead to very time-consuming runs. Some of these tasks cannot yet be comprehensively treated on now available computers. Special strategies have to be developed and applied to overcome such problems while waiting for further growth of computer performance.

The selection of representative and reliable measurement data (and measurement stations) is another difficulty when data assimilation techniques are to be implemented in a large-scale model. The results obtained by employing data assimilation techniques essentially depend on the availability of measurement data describing the treated system with sufficient complexity. Therefore, methods have to be developed which allow less accurate or even proxy-data to be implemented in data assimilation schemes. In particular, 4-dimensional variational data assimilation has the potential for such an approach.

All these topics, as well as some related topics, will be discussed at the workshop on “Data assimilation and its application”.

Co-Chairs:

Zahari Zlatev National Environmental Research Institute Frederiksborgvej 399, P. O. Box 358 DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark Tel:    +45 4630 1149 Fax:   +45 4630 1214 E-mail: zz@dmu.dk