Effect of Observation Network Design on Meteorological Forecasts of Asian Dust Events

AbstractTo improve the prediction of Asian dust events on the Korean Peninsula, meteorological fields must be accurately predicted because dust transport models require them as input. Accurate meteorological forecasts could be obtained by integrating accurate initial conditions obtained from data assimilation processes in numerical weather prediction. In data assimilation, selecting the appropriate observation location is important to ensure that the initial conditions represent the surrounding meteorological flow. To investigate the effect of observation network configuration on meteorological forecasts during Asian dust events on the Korean Peninsula, observing system simulation experiments using several simulated and real observation networks were tested with the Weather Research and Forecasting modeling system for 11 Asian dust events affecting the Korean Peninsula during a recent 6-yr period. First, the characteristics of randomly fixed and adaptively selected observation networks were investigated w...