Stochastic Methods for Sequential Data Assimilation in Strongly Nonlinear Systems

This paper considers several filtering methods of stochastic nature, based on Monte Carlo drawing, for the sequential data assimilation in nonlinear models. They include some known methods such as the particle filter and the ensemble Kalman filter and some others introduced by the author: the second-order ensemble Kalman filter and the singular extended interpolated filter. The aim is to study their behavior in the simple nonlinear chaotic Lorenz system, in the hope of getting some insight into more complex models. It is seen that these filters perform satisfactory, but the new filters introduced have the advantage of being less costly. This is achieved through the concept of second-order-exact drawing and the selective error correction, parallel to the tangent space of the attractor of the system (which is of low dimension). Also introduced is the use of a forgetting factor, which could enhance significantly the filter stability in this nonlinear context.