Atmospheric Motion Vectors at the Met Office: status, results and future plans

Atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) have been assimilated operationally in the Met Office global model since the 1980s and are useful for providing dynamical information for forecast models. Despite their use over two decades, significant advances are still being made to the coverage and quality of the data. In the two years since the 7th International Winds Workshop we have made four operational AMV changes to our global model including use of the new MODIS polar wind dataset and transition from the Meteosat-7 to the new generation Meteosat-8 AMVs. Results of recent data denial experiments show that the AMVs are providing benefit despite the ever-improving global observing system. It may be possible to improve the impact further by better representing the errors in the data. Plans to improve the AMV observation errors at the Met Office are outlined, but full benefit of the approach will require more quality information from the data producers