Tangborn, AndrewDemoz, BelayCarroll, Brian J.Santanello, Joseph A.Anderson, Jeffrey L.2020-06-112020-06-112020-04-29Andrew Tangborn et al., Assimilation of lidar back-scatter and wind retrievals of planetary boundary layer height into WRF atmospheric forecast states, Earth and Space Science Open Archive, pages 12 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10502857.1https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10502857.1http://hdl.handle.net/11603/18868Lidar backscatter and wind retrievals of the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) are assimilated into forecasts from the NASA Unified - Weather and Research Forecast (NU-WRF) model during the Plains Elevated Convection Convection at Night (PECAN) campaign on July 11, 2015 in Greensburg, Kansas, using error statistics collected from the model profiles to compute the necessary covariance matrices. Assimilation of the observed PBLH was found to improve the temperature, water vapor and velocity profiles relative to independent sonde profiles in the late afternoon, while little improvement was seen during the night and early morning. The computed forecast error covariances between the PBLH and state variables were found to rise in the late afternoon, leading to the larger improvements at this time.12 pagesen-USThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.Public Domain Mark 1.0This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/Text