2021/12/14 by Colin Grudzien, Marc Bocquet, Grudzien, Colin +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Methodology (stat.ME) #Optimization and Control (math.OC) #Reservoir Engineering and Simulation Methods
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2112.07704
openalex publication_date 2021/12/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This tutorial provides a broad introduction to Bayesian data assimilation that will be useful to practitioners, in interpreting algorithms and results, and for theoretical studies developing novel schemes with an understanding of the rich history of geophysical data assimilation and its current directions. The simple case of data assimilation in a 'perfect' model is primarily discussed for pedagogical purposes. Some mathematical results are derived at a high-level in order to illustrate key ideas about different estimators. However, the focus of this work is on the intuition behind these methods, where more formal and detailed treatments of the data assimilation problem can be found in the various references. In surveying a variety of widely used data assimilation schemes, the key message of this tutorial is how the Bayesian analysis provides a consistent framework for the estimation problem and how this allows one to formulate its solution in a variety of ways to exploit the operational challenges in the geosciences.