bengtsson@dkrz.de ; Dave Burridge
Sent: Tuesday, 02 March, 2004 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: ECMWF Directorate Memorandum of 23 June 1987
Dear Antti,
I believed the memorandum written many years ago should in no way be construed to disqualify your work at the time. The situation at the time at ECMWF was that we were heavily involved in other urgent work which needed all our resources. We were also heavily pressed to achieve concrete results quickly. In retrospective it is perhaps to be regretted that the Centre could not devote as much time to basic research as at least I wanted to do. The fact that I a few years later went over to the research community was primarily that I wanted to devote my time to basic science.
As you know Antti, I have always considered you as an original and creative researcher with a special capability in advanced statistics. The Kalman filter approach is nowadays very much in the forefront of research in data-assimilation. You can just see the many papers which are presently being produced. However, as always happens in science new ideas need to appear at the right time in order to be accepted fully. Th reason is not primarily the people are conservative but rather the fact the other scientific and technical aspects of the problem must also be ready, Such an aspect is the computer resources needed for the ensemble Kalman filter approach, which now is being looked into by different people as a very promising method (e.g. Ref
to E Kalnay, Uni Maryland).
Please be happy to copy this letter if you so whish to the director of FMI.