On the representation error in data assimilation

Representation, representativity, representativeness error, forward interpolation error, forward model error, observation‐operator error, aggregation error and sampling error are all terms used to refer to components of observation error in the context of data assimilation. This article is an attempt to consolidate the terminology that has been used in the earth sciences literature and was suggested at a European Space Agency workshop held in Reading in April 2014. We review the state of the art and, through examples, motivate the terminology. In addition to a theoretical framework, examples from application areas of satellite data assimilation, ocean reanalysis and atmospheric chemistry data assimilation are provided. Diagnosing representation‐error statistics as well as their use in state‐of‐the‐art data assimilation systems is discussed within a consistent framework.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

• Publication date

  2018-04-01

• Fields of study

  Physics, Computer Science, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/qj.3130
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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