Assimilation of dial data in mesoscale models: An impact study during IHOP_2002

DIAL methodology is analyzed for developing a forward observation operator and an error covariance matrix for 4-d variational assimilation of water vapor data into mesoscale models. The operator is applied to data of the LASE system which were collected during the IHOP_2002 campaign. The assimilation effort will be performed using the MM5 model nested into an ECMWF analysis. The goal of this project is to investigate the impact of water vapor DIAL data assimilation on the prediction of water vapor, cloud and precipitation fields.