Self-Organizing Maps for the Investigation of Tornadic Near-Storm Environments

Details

• Journal Title:
  Weather and Forecasting
• Personal Author:
  Anderson-Frey, A. K. ; Richardson, Y. P. ; Dean, A. R. ; Thompson, R. L. ; Smith, B. T.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service) ; SPC (Storm Prediction Center)
• Description:
  In this work, self-organizing maps (SOMs) are used to investigate patterns of favorable near-storm environmental parameters in a 13-yr climatology of 14 814 tornado events and 44 961 tornado warnings across the continental United States. Establishing nine statistically distinct clusters of spatial distributions of the significant tornado parameter (STP) in the 480 km × 480 km region surrounding each tornado event or warning allows for the examination of each cluster in isolation. For tornado events, distinct patterns are associated more with particular times of day, geographical locations, and times of year. For example, the archetypal springtime dryline setup in the Great Plains emerges readily from the data. While high values of STP tend to correspond to relatively high probabilities of detection (PODs) and relatively low false alarm ratios (FARs), the majority of tornado events occur within a pattern of uniformly lower STP, with relatively high FAR and low POD. Overall, the two-dimensional plots produced by the SOM approach provide an intuitive way of creating nuanced climatologies of tornadic near-storm environments.
• Keywords:
  Severe Storms Tornadoes Severe Storms
• Source:
  Weather and Forecasting, 32(4), 1467-1475
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/waf-d-17-0034.1
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA14NWS4680015
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  CHORUS
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:24228d19aed1b442732a8519c69ed4f4b40ff363347f02357dc66c4ce5cedecd
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/48417/noaa_48417_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.50 MB ]