Study on ETKF-Based Initial Perturbation Scheme for GRAPES Global Ensemble Prediction

Initial perturbation scheme is one of the important problems for ensemble prediction. In this paper, ensemble initial perturbation scheme for Global/Regional Assimilation and PrEdiction System (GRAPES) global ensemble prediction is developed in terms of the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) method.A new GRAPES global ensemble prediction system (GEPS) is also constructed. The spherical simplex 14-member ensemble prediction experiments, using the simulated observation network and error characteristics of simulated observations and innovation-based in ation, are carried out for about two months. The structure characters and perturbation amplitudes of the ETKF initial perturbations and the perturbation growth characters are analyzed, and their qualities and abilities for the ensemble initial perturbations are given. The preliminary experimental results indicate that the ETKF-based GRAPES ensemble initial perturbations could identify main normal structures of analysis error variance and reflect the perturbation amplitudes.The initial perturbations and the spread are reasonable. The initial perturbation variance, which is approximately equal to the forecast error variance, is found to respond to changes in the observational spatial variations with simulated observational network density. The perturbations generated through the simplex method are also shown to exhibit a very high degree of consistency between initial analysis and short-range forecast perturbations. The appropriate growth and spread of ensemble perturbations can be maintained up to 96-h lead time. The statistical results for 52-day ensemble forecasts show that the forecast scores ofensemble average for the Northern Hemisphere are higher than that of the control forecast. Provided that using more ensemble members, a real-time observational network and a more appropriate inflation factor,better effects of the ETKF-based initial scheme should be shown.