THE SETUP OF THE MesoVICT PROJECT Dorninger, Manfred; Gilleland, Eric; Casati, Barbara ...
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
09/2018, Volume:
99, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Recent advancements in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and the enhancement of model resolution have created the need for more robust and informative verification methods. In response to these ...needs, a plethora of spatial verification approaches have been developed in the past two decades. A spatial verification method intercomparison was established in 2007 with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the abilities of the new spatial verification methods to diagnose different types of forecast errors. The project focused on prescribed errors for quantitative precipitation forecasts over the central United States. The intercomparison led to a classification of spatial verification methods and a cataloging of their diagnostic capabilities, providing useful guidance to end users, model developers, and verification scientists. A decade later, NWP systems have continued to increase in resolution, including advances in high-resolution ensembles. This article describes the setup of a second phase of the verification intercomparison, called the Mesoscale Verification Intercomparison over Complex Terrain (MesoVICT). MesoVICT focuses on the application, capability, and enhancement of spatial verification methods to deterministic and ensemble forecasts of precipitation, wind, and temperature over complex terrain. Importantly, this phase also explores the issue of analysis uncertainty through the use of an ensemble of meteorological analyses.
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Abstract The International Verification Methods Workshop was held online in November 2020 and included sessions on physical error characterization using process diagnostics and error tracking ...techniques; exploitation of data assimilation techniques in verification practices, e.g., to address representativeness issues and observation uncertainty; spatial verification methods and the Model Evaluation Tools, as unified reference verification software; and meta-verification and best practices for scores computation. The workshop reached out to diverse research communities working in the areas of high-impact weather, subseasonal to seasonal prediction, polar prediction, and sea ice and ocean prediction. This article summarizes the major outcomes of the workshop and outlines future strategic directions for verification research.
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A very dense surface network consisting of 38 stations was operated in the Rhine Valley and its tributaries during the MAP-SOP. The data was used to investigate foehn on the meso-scale. The "Vienna ...Enhanced Resolution Analysis" (VERA) is a model-independent analysis approach and was adapted to interpolate meteorological data in individual valleys. Minimizing different spatial derivatives as a cost function and taking the topography into account made it possible to get reasonably low level meteorological fields of pressure and potential temperature on a 2 km grid. The data of the surface stations used in the analyses were carefully quality-controlled. The examination of different foehn cases throughout the autumn of 1999 yields interesting and detailed features in the fields of pressure and potential temperature.
The international field campaign called the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) took place from June to August 2007 in southwestern Germany/eastern France. The ...overarching goal of COPS is to advance the quality of forecasts of orographically-induced convective precipitation by four-dimensional observations and modeling of its life cycle. COPS was endorsed as one of the Research and Development Projects of the World Weather Research Program (WWRP), and combines the efforts of institutions and scientists from eight countries. A strong collaboration between instrument principal investigators and experts on mesoscale modeling has been established within COPS. In order to study the relative importance of large-scale and small-scale forcing leading to convection initiation in low mountains, COPS is coordinated with a one-year General Observations Period in central Europe, the WWRP Forecast Demonstration Project MAP D-PHASE, and the first summertime European THORPEX Regional Campaign. Furthermore, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program Mobile Facility operated in the central COPS observing region for nine months in 2007. The article describes the scientific preparation of this project and the design of the observation systems. COPS will rest on three pillars: A unique synergy of observing systems, the next-generation high-resolution mesoscale models with improved model physics, and advanced data assimilation and ensemble prediction systems. These tools will be used to separate and to quantify errors in quantitative precipitation forecasting as well as to study the predictability of convective precipitation.
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The international field campaign called the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) took place from June to August 2007 in southwestern Germany/eastern France. The ...overarching goal of COPS is to advance the quality of forecasts of orographically-induced convective precipitation by four-dimensional observations and modeling of its life cycle.
COPS was endorsed as one of the Research and Development Projects of the World Weather Research Program (WWRP), and combines the efforts of institutions and scientists from eight countries. A strong collaboration between instrument principal investigators and experts on mesoscale modeling has been established within COPS. In order to study the relative importance of large-scale and small-scale forcing leading to convection initiation in low mountains, COPS is coordinated with a one-year General Observations Period in central Europe, the WWRP Forecast Demonstration Project MAP D-PHASE, and the first summertime European THORPEX Regional Campaign. Furthermore, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program Mobile Facility operated in the central COPS observing region for nine months in 2007.
The article describes the scientific preparation of this project and the design of the observation systems. COPS will rest on three pillars: A unique synergy of observing systems, the next-generation high-resolution mesoscale models with improved model physics, and advanced data assimilation and ensemble prediction systems. These tools will be used to separate and to quantify errors in quantitative precipitation forecasting as well as to study the predictability of convective precipitation.
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The comprehensive data collection effort in the framework of the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP) offers the unprecedented possibility to carry out a careful evaluation of the performance of one of ...the densest surface observational networks of the world. Quality control of meteorological data today is usually seen as an integrated step of prognostic model initialization. If mesoscale models should be validated independently, however, a model independent quality checking procedure becomes important, especially when operating over complex terrain. For that reason DAQUAMAP, a project sponsored by the EUMETNET programme MAP-NWS, was conducted to make a high quality data set available to the scientific community testing high resolution numerical weather forecast models as well as performing diagnostic studies. The applied method of quality control consists of an automatic spatial consistency check of primary atmospheric variables. It allows to recognize gross errors and biases of individual station data and to derive station characteristics as well. The latter is especially important when validating model results with single station data. Due to a separate treatment of GTS and combined GTS and non-GTS station data a distinction of the performance of both networks could be achieved. Also a comparison between a similar exercise done with the ALPEX data set in 1982 and the MAP data set has been carried out. This allows to assess the effect of automatization in the meteorological observation networks which has taken place during the last 20 years. Die umfangreiche Datensammlung des Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP) eröffnet die einzigartige Möglichkeit, eine sorgfältige Überprüfung eines der dichtesten Bodenmessnetze der Welt durchzuführen. Die Qualitätskontrolle meteorologischer Daten wird heute meist als Schritt gesehen, der in die Initialisierung von numerischen Wetterprognosemodellen integriert ist. Zur Validierung mesoskaliger Modelle ist jedoch eine modell-unabhängige Qualitätskontrolle der Daten wichtig. Dies gilt insbesondere über komplexem Terrain. Aus diesem Grund wurde das Projekt DAQUAMAP im Rahmen des EUMETNET Programms MAP-NWS initiiert und finanziert. Das Projekt hatte zum Ziel, der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft einen qualitativ hochwertigen Datensatz zum Testen von hochauflösenden Prognosemodellen und für diagnostische Studien zur Verfügung zu stellen. Die angewandte Methode besteht aus einem räumlichen Konsistenzcheck der wichtigsten primären atmosphärischen Variablen. Damit können Ausreißer und systematische Fehler in den Daten von individuellen Stationen gefunden werden. Zusätzlich lassen sich aus den Ergebnissen Charakteristika der einzelnen Stationen ableiten. Durch die getrennte Anwendung der Methode auf GTS und die Kombination von GTS und nicht-GTS Daten konnte das unterschiedliche Qualitätsverhalten der beiden unterschiedlich dichten Messnetze eruiert werden. Die Ergebnisse von MAP wurden mit jenen der Qualitätskontrolle des ALPEX Datensatzes aus dem Jahr 1982 verglichen, um den Effekt der seither erfolgten Automatisierung der Stationsnetze zu untersuchen.
A mesoscale data analysis method for meteorological station reports is presented. Irregularly distributed measured values are combined with measurement-independent a priori information about the ...modification of analysis fields due to topographic forcing. As a physical constraint to a thin-plate spline interpolation, the so-called "fingerprint method" recognizes patterns of topographic impact in the data and allows for the transfer of information to data-sparse areas. The results of the method are small-scale interpolation fields on a regular grid including topographically induced patterns that are not resolved by the station network. Presently, the fingerprint method is designed for the analysis of scalar meteorological variables like reduced pressure or air temperature. The principles for the fingerprint technique are based on idealized influence fields. They are calculated for thermal and dynamic surface forcing. For the former, the effects of reduced air volumes in valleys, the elevated heal sources, and the stability of the valley atmosphere are taken into account. The increase of temperature under ideal conditions in comparison to flat terrain is determined on a 1-km grid using height and surface geometry information. For the latter, a perturbation of an originally constant cross-Alpine temperature gradient is calculated by a topographical weighting. As a result, the gradient is steep where the mountain range is high and steep. If, during the interpolation process, some signal of the idealized patterns is found in the station data, it is used to downscale the analysis. It is shown by a cross validation of a case study that the interpolation of a mean sea level pressure field over the Alpine region is improved objectively by the method. Thermally induced mesoscale patterns are visible in the interpolated pressure field. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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