Graphical Abstract

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Yumimoto, K., T. Y. Tanaka, M. Yoshida, M. Kikuchi, T. M. Nagao, H. Murakami, and T. Maki, 2018: Assimilation and forecasting experiment for heavy Siberian wildfire smoke in May 2016 with Himawari-8 aerosol optical thickness. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 96B, 133-149.
https://doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2018-035   Graphical Abstract with highlights

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Highlights:

• The first application of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) provided by Himawari-8, a Japanese third-generation geostationary meteorological satellite launched by Japanese Meteorological Agency, to an operation-oriented aerosol assimilation and forecasting system is demonstrated.
• To effectively utilize the observational capability of Himawari-8, the system assimilated 1-h merged AOTs generated through the combination of six AOT snapshots taken over 10-min intervals, three times per day.
• An assimilation and forecasting experiments for a heavy Siberian wildfire smoke event show that data assimilation with the Himawari-8 AOTs successfully improved the underestimation of the smoke in the forecast without assimilation and resulted in a better forecast performance (Fig. 1).
• Our results also indicate that the inheritance of assimilation cycles and the assimilation of more recent observations let to better forecasting in this case of a continental smoke outflow.