Estimating the 4DVAR analysis error of GODAE products

We explore the ocean circulation estimates obtained by assimilating observational products made available by the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) and other sources in an incremental, four-dimensional variational data assimilation system for the Intra-Americas Sea. Estimates of the analysis error (formally, the inverse Hessian matrix) are computed during the assimilation procedure. Comparing the impact of differing sea surface height and sea surface temperature products on both the final analysis error and difference between the model state estimates, we find that assimilating GODAE and non-GODAE products yields differences between the model and observations that are comparable to the differences between the observation products themselves. While the resulting analysis error estimates depend on the configuration of the assimilation system, the basic spatial structures of the standard deviations of the ocean circulation estimates are fairly robust and reveal that the assimilation procedure is capable of reducing the circulation uncertainty when only surface data are assimilated.