In the cost function of three- or four-dimensional variational data assimilation, each term is weighted by the inverse of its associated error covariance matrix and the background error covariance matrix is usually much larger than the other covariance matrices. Although the background error covariances are traditionally normalized and parameterized by simple smooth homogeneous correlation functions, the covariance matrices constructed from these correlation functions are often too large to be inverted or even manipulated. It is thus desirable to find direct representations of the inverses of background error correlations. This problem is studied in this paper. In particular, it is shown that the background term can be written into ∫ dx|Dv(x)|2, that is, a squaredL2 norm of a vector differential operatorD, called the D-operator, applied to the field of analysis increment v(x). For autoregressive correlation functions, the D-operators are of finite orders. For Gaussian correlation functions, the D-operators are of infinite order. For practical applications, the Gaussian D-operators must be truncated to finite orders. The truncation errors are found to be small even when the Gaussian D-operators are truncated to low orders. With a truncated D-operator, the background term can be easily constructed with neither inversion nor direct calculation of the covariance matrix. D-operators are also derived for non-Gaussian correlations and transformed into non-isotropic forms.