Representatives of meteorological services and space agencies as well as radiative transfer experts met early March 2025 at ESA's Frascati office for a workshop on the assimilation of visible and near-infrared satellite images. The DWD and the Hans Ertel Centre were strongly represented and presented results for model evaluation with satellite data in the visible spectral range (in cooperation with the ECMWF), on operational assimilation in ICON-D2 and on new approaches for AI-based forward operators. An important point was also the presentation of the recently released version 14 of the RTTOV radiation transfer package, which includes the forward operator MFASIS developed by DWD and HErZ and that supports significantly more satellite instruments in the visible and near-infrared spectral range than before.

Participants of the workshop on the assimilation of visible and near-infrared satellite images in Frascati, March 2025. Copyrigt: L. Scheck.