19,333 research outputs found
Nonlinear stability and ergodicity of ensemble based Kalman filters
The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and ensemble square root filter (ESRF) are
data assimilation methods used to combine high dimensional, nonlinear dynamical
models with observed data. Despite their widespread usage in climate science
and oil reservoir simulation, very little is known about the long-time behavior
of these methods and why they are effective when applied with modest ensemble
sizes in large dimensional turbulent dynamical systems. By following the basic
principles of energy dissipation and controllability of filters, this paper
establishes a simple, systematic and rigorous framework for the nonlinear
analysis of EnKF and ESRF with arbitrary ensemble size, focusing on the
dynamical properties of boundedness and geometric ergodicity. The time uniform
boundedness guarantees that the filter estimate will not diverge to machine
infinity in finite time, which is a potential threat for EnKF and ESQF known as
the catastrophic filter divergence. Geometric ergodicity ensures in addition
that the filter has a unique invariant measure and that initialization errors
will dissipate exponentially in time. We establish these results by introducing
a natural notion of observable energy dissipation. The time uniform bound is
achieved through a simple Lyapunov function argument, this result applies to
systems with complete observations and strong kinetic energy dissipation, but
also to concrete examples with incomplete observations. With the Lyapunov
function argument established, the geometric ergodicity is obtained by
verifying the controllability of the filter processes; in particular, such
analysis for ESQF relies on a careful multivariate perturbation analysis of the
covariance eigen-structure.Comment: 38 page
Nonlinear stability of the ensemble Kalman filter with adaptive covariance inflation
The Ensemble Kalman filter and Ensemble square root filters are data
assimilation methods used to combine high dimensional nonlinear models with
observed data. These methods have proved to be indispensable tools in science
and engineering as they allow computationally cheap, low dimensional ensemble
state approximation for extremely high dimensional turbulent forecast models.
From a theoretical perspective, these methods are poorly understood, with the
exception of a recently established but still incomplete nonlinear stability
theory. Moreover, recent numerical and theoretical studies of catastrophic
filter divergence have indicated that stability is a genuine mathematical
concern and can not be taken for granted in implementation. In this article we
propose a simple modification of ensemble based methods which resolves these
stability issues entirely. The method involves a new type of adaptive
covariance inflation, which comes with minimal additional cost. We develop a
complete nonlinear stability theory for the adaptive method, yielding Lyapunov
functions and geometric ergodicity under weak assumptions. We present numerical
evidence which suggests the adaptive methods have improved accuracy over
standard methods and completely eliminate catastrophic filter divergence. This
enhanced stability allows for the use of extremely cheap, unstable forecast
integrators, which would otherwise lead to widespread filter malfunction.Comment: 34 pages. 4 figure
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