Report on Data Assimilation Working Group meeting, 4 March 2013
Thanks to all who were able to contribute (in person or via submission of material) to the first workshop of the Data Assimilation Working Group of OzEWEX. It was a great day, and I look forward to next time we meet.
The inaugural meeting of the WG on DA was held at Monash University on 20 Feb 2013. For the morning of the workshop, we heard a range of very interesting talks: from new and emerging sensing technologies, remotely-sensed and ground-based, for wide area measurement of water fluxes (with possibilities for model/satellite verification in the future); to application of soil moisture and streamflow assimilation to constrain land surface / hydrological model estimation. We will make these presentations available (pending author permission) via the google.groups site shortly.
The afternoon was largely devoted to discussion around the possibility joint activities of interest to the WG. The idea behind this is that an activity will strengthen engagement between WG members by providing a focussed problem(s) to solve by combining our collective strengths. One idea that we discussed was for a hydrological DA method intercomparison study for Australia. The topic covers a number of areas WG members expressed an interest in: from reference data sets for evaluation; pretreatment of observational data prior to assimilation; to the suitability of different methods for hydrological DA; and incorporation of model error. Over the next month or two, we will develop the idea around the intercomparison project further with the help a subset of WG members and material that Imtiaz has sent around (will circulate wider after we have obtained the author’s permission).
I have set up a Google.group which I intend to be the main vehicle for communication between our members (which will include meeting notifications, paper alerts, sharing of expertise, links to data sets and other sites of interest).
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ozewex-working-group-on-data-assimilation
Luigi Renzullo
