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Evaluation and Assimilation of the Microwave Sounder MWHS-2 Onboard FY-3C in the ECMWF Numerical Weather Prediction System

This paper presents an evaluation of the quality of data from the MicroWave Humidity Sounder-2, flown on the FY-3C polar orbiting satellite, and first results of trials assimilating the data in all-sky conditions in the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts’ assimilation system. This instrument combines traditional microwave humidity sounding capabilities at 183 GHz with new channels at 118 GHz, which have never before been available from space. The aim of this paper is twofold: to contribute to the calibration/validation of this satellite by evaluating the data and to test for the first time the impact of assimilating 118-GHz sounding channels in a global numerical weather prediction system. MWHS-2 was first evaluated by comparing observation minus short-range forecast statistics to similar instruments, which indicated that the quality was generally similar. Adding the 118- and 183-GHz channels to the full operational observing system led to small improvements in the short-range (~12 h) forecast accuracy for both sets of channels, and improvements in the 2–4-day wind forecast accuracy for the 183-GHz channels. Short-range forecasts were improved for global humidity in particular when assimilating the 183-GHz channels (0.5% improvement) and for cloud and low-level wind in the Southern Hemisphere extra-tropics when assimilating the 118-GHz channels (by, respectively, 0.5% and 0.2%). In the absence of other atmospheric observations, assimilating the 118-GHz channels improved the global forecast accuracy, but the overall impact was less than for the 183-GHz channels, or for equivalent Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A channels.