Progress in synoptic and dynamic meteorology is often marked by the advent of new or improved observing systems and novel methods for analyzing and understanding these data. For example, deployment of the routine radiosonde network and the emergence of quasigeostrophic theory provided the opportunity to both better document and understand synoptic-scale weather systems during the latter half of the 20th century for analysts such as Fred Sanders. We propose that emerging techniques in state estimation (``data assimilation'') may offer new opportunities to analyze and understand atmospheric phenomena. We group these opportunities under the title ``Ensemble Synoptic Analysis'' (ESA), which derives from the fact that the methods pertain to ensembles of analyses valid at an instant (or multiple instants) in time. Our goal is to outline the analysis techniques available to ESA, and to demonstrate these techniques through illustrative examples.

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