Page History

Current activities

Patricia is Senior Scientist with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) where she is responsible of the Land surface Data Assimilation System (LDAS) Team Leader activities.  Her research activities are focused on the development of a multi-variate surface data assimilation system in the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) to cope with the increase in model complexity and new satellite data availability (e.g. ASCAT, SMOS, SMAP). Land surface analysis includes: screen level parameters analysis, snow analysis, soil moisture & temperature analysis.
She implemented a new soil moisture analysis scheme based on a point-wise Extended-Kalman Filter (EKF) for the global land surface in the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System in November 2010. As part of the EKF implementation strategy a new surface analysis structure was implemented in 2009 to separate completely the upper air analysis and the surface analysis. The new EKF surface analysis opens the possibility to investigate the use of active (ASCAT) and passive (SMOS) microwave satellite data for soil moisture analysis in Numerical Weather Prediction.
Concerning snow, she conducted major research developments in the past few years to improve the quality of the snow analysis, to do a better usage of the satellite snow cover information (use of the IMS NESDIS snow cover information ) and to improve the SYNOP data quality control. She implemented implemented an Optimal Snow analysis (OI) in operations in November 2010 and further revision of the snow analysis, with improved assimilation of IMS snow cover data, including separate error specification that was implemented in IFS cycle 40r1 in November 2013. Land surface observation monitoring and improved land surface blacklisting system were part of these developments.

Patricia de Rosnay coordinating the SMOS and H - SAF projects at ECMWF. She is also Member of:

• The COST action ES1404 A european network for a harmonised monitoring of snow for the benefit of climate change scenarios, hydrology and numerical weather prediction (2014)
• the Snow Watch group of Global Cryosphere Watch (since 2015)
• the surface expert team of the SRNWP (Short Range Numerical Weather Prediction) (since 2009)
• the NASA SMAP Early Adopters Team (since 2011) 
• the SMOS Quality Working Group (since 2010)
• The Global Land/Atmosphere System Study (GLASS) panel (since 2009)
• theSatellite Application Facility (SAF) on support to operational hydrology (H-SAF)Project Team (since 2008)

Career background

Before working at ECMWF Patricia worked for 5 years (2002-2007) as research scientist for the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) at CESBIO (Toulouse). She was invloved in soil moisture and passive microwave radiometry observation field experiments (SMOSREX, AMMA, Nafe2005), in the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission preparation, and in coordinated land surface modeling experiments (ALMIP).

Her previous professional experience from 1994 to 2002, was focused on global land surface modelling developments. In particular, she developed the multi-layer hydrology, sub-grid scale representation of vegetation and soil texture and the irrigation parameterisation in the ORCHIDEE land surface model at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD/IPSL, Paris, France).

Patricia de Rosnay received her Ph.D degree in climate modelling from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6, France) in 1999.

E-mail: Patricia dot Rosnay at ecmwf dot int