In the construction of an ensemble‐based data assimilation system for a complex fully coupled general circulation model (CGCM), the model state errors at initial time of assimilation have an important influence on assimilation quality. In this study, with the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART), we found that the influence of initial states errors persists throughout a vicious cycle and cannot be automatically remedied via consequent assimilations. As such, two strategies were applied to alleviate the initial state errors, and a reliable assimilation system was developed. Data assimilation experiments using oceanic observations were conducted over the period from 2005 to 2014 to investigate the impact of these different strategies. The evaluation revealed that the assimilation of observation‐derived climatological data is an effective approach to reduce initial state errors and preserve the balance between different variables to the largest extent, which significantly improved the performance of the assimilation system in the investigated time period. It was further found that the developed assimilation system can produce high‐quality oceanic analysis results comparable to the ECDA and GODAS, two widely used reanalysis products. Perspectives toward further improvement of coupled data assimilation are also outlined.

Parameter estimation plays an important role in reducing model error and thus is of great significance to improve the simulation and prediction capabilities of the model. However, due to filtering divergence, parameter estimation by ensemble-based filters still faces great challenges. Previous studies have shown that a covariance inflation scheme could alleviate the filtering divergence problem by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the state-parameter covariance. In this study, we proposed a new inflation scheme based on a local ensemble transform Kalman filter (LETKF). With the new scheme, the Zebiak–Cane (Z-C) model parameters were estimated by assimilating the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) data. The effectiveness of the parameter estimation and its influence on El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) prediction were evaluated in an observation system simulation experiments (OSSE) framework and real-world scenario, respectively. With the utilization of the OSSE framework, the results showed that the model parameters were successfully estimated. Parameter estimation reduced the model error when compared with only state estimation (onlySE); however, multiple parameter estimation (MPE) further improved the ENSO prediction skill by providing better initial conditions and parameter values than the single parameter estimation (SPE). Parameter estimation could thus alleviate the spring prediction barrier (SPB) phenomenon of ENSO to a certain extent. In real-world experiments, the optimized parameters significantly improved the ENSO forecasting skill, primarily in prediction of warm events. This study provides an effective parameter estimation strategy to improve climate models and further climate predictions in the real world.

This paper introduces a novel ensemble adjustment Kalman filter (EAKF) that integrates a machine-learning approach. The conventional EAKF adopts linear and Gaussian assumptions, making it difficult to handle cross-component updates in strongly coupled data assimilation (SCDA). The new approach employs nonlinear variable relationships established by a deep neural network (DNN) during the analysis stage of the EAKF, which nonlinearly projects observation increments into the state variable space. It can diminish errors in estimating cross-component error covariance arising from insufficient ensemble members, therefore improving the SCDA analysis. A conceptual coupled model is employed in this paper to conduct twin experiments, validating the DNN–EAKF’s capability to outperform conventional EAKF in SCDA. The results reveal that the DNN–EAKF can make SCDA superior to WCDA with a limited ensemble size. The root-mean-squared errors are reduced up to 70% while the anomaly correlation coefficients are increased up to 20% when the atmospheric observations are used to update the ocean variables directly. The other model components can also be improved through SCDA. This approach is anticipated to offer insights for future methodological integrations of machine learning and data assimilation and provide methods for SCDA applications in coupled general circulation models.

In real applications, one common issue of parameter estimation using ensemble-based data assimilation methods is the accumulation of sampling errors when a large number of observations are used to update single-value parameters. In this article, a new parameter estimation method which assimilates a large number of observations to estimate the states while assimilates adaptive observations to update the parameters is introduced. The observations resulting in maximum total variance reduction to the parameter ensembles are identified to perform parameter estimation. To validate this new method, the two-scale Lorenz-96 model is used to generate true states, while a parameterized one-scale Lorenz-96 model is used to perform state and parameter estimation experiments. The comparison between state estimation and parameter estimation with fixed or adaptive observations shows the new method can be more effective in estimating the model parameters and providing more accurate analyses. This method also shows its potential to be used in the data assimilation with large general circulation models to better produce reanalyzes.