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The impact of assimilating rainfall derived from radar and satellites on rainstorm forecasts over the Southwestern United States is discussed. The major advantage of 4DVAR is the use of full model dynamics and physics to assimilate multiple-time-level observation data. Rainfall assimilation via 4DVAR is used to improve the moisture distributions in model IC. It is found that by using 4DVAR to generate model IC, the precipitation intensity and patterns can be improved substantially over the mid-latitude plain regions.
