Influence of Surface Temperature and Emissivity on AMSU-A Assimilation over Land

AMSU-A (Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A) measurements for channels that are sensitive to the surface over land have not been widely assimilated into numerical weather prediction (NWP) models due to complicated land surface features. In this paper, the impact of AMSU-A assimilation over land in Southwest Asia is investigated with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Four radiance assimilation experiments with different land-surface schemes are designed, then compared and verified against radiosonde observations and global analyses. Besides the surface emissivity calculated from the emissivity model and surface temperature from the background field in current WRF variational data assimilation (WRF-VAR) system, the surface parameters from the operational Microwave Surface and Precipitation Products System (MSPPS) are introduced to understand the influence of surface parameters on AMSU-A assimilation over land.