The Use of Satellite Data in the Specification of Convective Heating for Diabatic Initialization and Moisture Adjustment in Numerical Weather Prediction Models

Although diabatic processes play an important role in the tropical circulation, current analysis schemes and numerical weather prediction models are unable to adequately include diabatic heating information. In this paper, procedures for using outgoing longwave radiation data as proxy data for diabatic heating rates and to initialize the moisture field are proposed. The feasibility of using this data in the ECMWF data assimilation system is demonstrated, and it is further shown that using appropriate diabatic heating together with moisture initialization has the potential to substantially reduce the spinup time in numerical weather prediction models.