Important literature on the use of adjoint, variational methods and the Kalman filter in meteorology

Abstract

The use of adjoint equations is proving to be invaluable in many areas of meteorological research. Unlike a forecast model which describes the evolution of meteorological fields forward in time, the adjoint equations describe the evolution of sensitivity (to initial, boundary and parametric conditions) backward in time. Essentially, by utilizing this sensitivity information, many types of problems can be solved more efficiently than in the past, including variational data assimilation, parameter fitting, optimal instability and sensitivity analysis in general. For this reason, the adjoints of various models and their applications have been appearing more and more frequently in meteorological research. This paper is a bibliography in chronological order of published works in meteorology dealing with adjoints which have appeared prior to this issue of Tellus. Also included are meteorological works regarding variational methods (even without adjoints) and Kalman filtering in data assimilation, plus some references outside meteorology. These additional works are included here because the main thrust for adjoint application within meteorology is currently concentrated in the development of next-generation data assimilation systems.