Details:

Journal Title:
Monthly Weather Review
Personal Author:
Schwartz, Craig S. ; Wong, May ; Romine, Glen S. ; Sobash, Ryan A. ; Fossell, Kathryn R.
Schwartz, Craig S. ; Wong, May ; Romine, Glen S. ; Sobash, Ryan A. ; Fossell, Kathryn R. Less -
NOAA Program & Office:
OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research)
Description:
Five sets of 48-h, 10-member, convection-allowing ensemble (CAE) forecasts with 3-km horizontal grid spacing were systematically evaluated over the conterminous United States with a focus on precipitation across 31 cases. The various CAEs solely differed by their initial condition perturbations (ICPs) and central initial states. CAEs initially centered about deterministic Global Forecast System (GFS) analyses were unequivocally better than those initially centered about ensemble mean analyses produced by a limited-area single-physics, single-dynamics 15-km continuously cycling ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF), strongly suggesting relative superiority of the GFS analyses. Additionally, CAEs with flow-dependent ICPs derived from either the EnKF or multimodel 3-h forecasts from the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) system had higher fractions skill scores than CAEs with randomly generated mesoscale ICPs. Conversely, due to insufficient spread, CAEs with EnKF ICPs had worse reliability, discrimination, and dispersion than those with random and SREF ICPs. However, members in the CAE with SREF ICPs undesirably clustered by dynamic core represented in the ICPs, and CAEs with random ICPs had poor spinup characteristics. Collectively, these results indicate that continuously cycled EnKF mean analyses were suboptimal for CAE initialization purposes and suggest that further work to improve limited-area continuously cycling EnKFs over large regional domains is warranted. Additionally, the deleterious aspects of using both multimodel and random ICPs suggest efforts toward improving spread in CAEs with single-physics, single-dynamics, flow-dependent ICPs should continue.
Keywords:
[+]
Atmospheric Science
Source:
Monthly Weather Review, 148(7), 2645-2669
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1175/mwr-d-19-0401.1
ISSN:
0027-0644;1520-0493;
Format:
PDF
Publisher:
American Meteorological Society
Document Type:
Journal Article
Funding:
Grant no. NA17OAR4590122 ; Grant no. NA17OAR4590182
Grant no. NA17OAR4590122 ; Grant no. NA17OAR4590182 Less -
Rights Information:
Other
Compliance:
Library
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:fc83bbda75cf0355a3bffbc319f61b589b5049b7132e1cfa9ef88b74d59eba65
Download URL:
https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/60437/noaa_60437_DS1.pdf
File Type:

Supporting Files

• No Additional Files

More +