Overview and New Opportunities for Multi-Source Data Assimilation

The world witnessed an accelerated development of various types of meteorological observing technology, an evolution of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models from single atmospheric component to coupled multi-components of the earth system, as well as the multi graphics processing unit technology in computer sciences, a new era for rapidly advancing data assimilation science and technology development has arrived. The multi-source data assimilation is important not only for NWP but also for further understanding of global and regional weather changes. This article firstly selectively reviews past methods of multi-source data assimilation. New opportunities are then discussed for future development of data assimilation system framework, for innovative uses of high-resolution observations, and for applications of artificial intelligence machine learning in meteorological data assimilation.