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6R.4. PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR THE 0-1 HOUR MULTISENSOR PRECIPITATION NOWCASTER. Shucai Guan and Feng Ding RS Information Systems/Hydrology Laboratory Richard Fulton and David Kitzmiller Hydrology Laboratory Office of Hydrologic Development National Weather Service, NOAA
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6R.4 PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR THE 0-1 HOUR MULTISENSOR PRECIPITATION NOWCASTER Shucai Guan and Feng Ding RS Information Systems/Hydrology Laboratory Richard Fulton and David Kitzmiller Hydrology Laboratory Office of Hydrologic Development National Weather Service, NOAA Silver Spring, Maryland 32nd Conference on Radar Meteorology26 October 2005, Albuquerque, NM
Outline • Introduction • Description of the Multisensor Precipitation Nowcaster (MPN) • Analysis Method and Results • Conclusions
Introduction • NWS mission includes warning operations for flash flooding conditions, currently the greatest storm-related threat to life in the United States. • MPN is developed for NWS Weather Forecast Offices to provide additional automated forecast guidance and lead-time for issuance of flash flood warnings. • The purpose: evaluate the accuracy of a scaled-down MPN (no gage data and no mosaicking) forecasts of rainrate and establish a baseline of performance.
Description of MPN • 4-km resolution, updated every 5 min; forecast 1-hour accumulated precipitation and 0-1 hour rain rates. • Can use rain gauge data to adjust the radar rainrates. • Mosaics regional radar data before making the forecast. • Uses a standard local pattern-matching scheme to estimate storm motion. • Three options for the smoothing: 1) no smoothing, 2) adaptable smoothing using the Flash Flood Potential method, or 3) a method proposed by Bellon and Zawadski (1994) (hereafter called BZ94). • Growth/decay of local rain rates.
7 flash flood cases in the MD-VA-PA region are investigated. • Six statistics (Bias, RMSE, COR, POD, FAR, and CSI) are used to evaluate and compare the accuracy of the parameter tests. • There are13 algorithm configurations for each case: 2(growth/decay; N or G) X 3 smoothing (none, FFP method, BZ94 method; N or F or B) X 2 (local vs. area-averaged storm motion; L or A) + persistence (PRS). For example, NFL is test with turning off growth/decay, using FFP smoothing and local storm motion.
Example of observed and forecasted 60-minute rain rate and one-hour accumulation images for June 13, 2003 (MPN with option NFL)
Growth/decay option as implemented causes positive bias in forecasts Smoothing option reduces bias in forecasts
Turning off growth/decay option results a perceptible improvement on RMSE after the 30 minute forecast Smoothing option reduces RMSE
The smoothing option increases correlation Turning on the growth/decay option has negligible improvement on correlation
Turning on the growth/decay option and smoothing option improve POD The effect of the growth/decay option is much larger than that of the smoothing option at 60 minutes into the forecast
Turning on the growth/decay option increases FAR The smoothing produces notable improvement on FAR after the 30 minute forecast
The smoothing improves CSI The growth/decay option has small mixed effect on CSI
-10% -10% -11% +71% +67% +32% +32% +54% +54%
Conclusions • MPN substantially improves all six statistics relative to persistence method.The progressive spatial smoothing creates major improvement for all six statistics. • Comparing with persistence, MPN: • Reduces RMSE by 24%. • Raises POD by 71% for rainrate > 5 mm/h. • Raises POD by 32% for rainrate >15 mm/h. • Decreases FAR by about 10%. • Increases CSI by 67% for rainrate > 5 mm/h. • Increases CSI by 54% for rainrate > 15 mm/h.