The Improvement Made by a Modified TLM in 4DVAR with a Geophysical Boundary Layer Model

The strong nonlinearity of boundary layer parameterizations in atmospheric and oceanic models can cause difficulty for tangent linear models in approximating nonlinear perturbations when the time integration grows longer. Consequently, the related 4-D variational data assimilation problems could be difficult to solve. A modified tangent linear model is built on the Mellor-Yamada turbulent closure (level 2.5) for 4-D variational data assimilation. For oceanic mixed layer model settings, the modified tangent linear model produces better finite amplitude, nonlinear perturbation than the full and simplified tangent linear models when the integration time is longer than one day. The corresponding variational data assimilation performances based on the adjoint of the modified tangent linear model are also improved compared with those adjoints of the full and simplified tangent linear models.