Assimilation of radar reflectivity via a full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme based on the WSM6 microphysics scheme in WRF 4D-Var

Abstract The microphysical parameterization scheme employed in four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) plays an important role in the assimilation of humidity and cloud-sensitive observations. In this study, a newly developed full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme, integrating warm-rain and cold-cloud processes, has been implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) 4D-Var system. This scheme is based on the WSM6 single-moment microphysical parameterization scheme. Its primary objective is to directly assimilate radar reflectivity observations, with the goal of evaluating its effects on model initialization and subsequent forecasting performance. Four assimilation experiments were conducted to assess the performance of the full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme against the warm-rain assimilation scheme. These experiments also investigated reflectivity assimilation using both indirect and direct methods. We found that the nonlinearity of the radar operator in the two directly reflectivity assimilation experiments requires more iterations for cost function reduction than in indirect assimilation method. The hydrometeor fields were reasonably analyzed using the full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme, particularly improving the simulation of ice-phase hydrometeors and reflectivity above the melting layer. The assimilation of radar reflectivity led to improvements in short-term (0-3 hour) precipitation forecasting with the full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme. Assimilation experiments across multiple case studies reaffirmed that assimilating radar reflectivity observations with the full-hydrometeor assimilation scheme can accelerated model spin-up and yielded enhancements in 0-3 hour total accumulate precipitation forecasts for a range of precipitation thresholds.