Does Increasing Horizontal Resolution Produce More Skillful Forecasts?

Mass, Clifford F.; Ovens, David; Westrick, Ken; Colle, Brian A.

doi:10.1175/1520-0477(2002)083<0407:dihrpm>2.3.co;2

Cited by 638 publications

(407 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…An acknowledged limitation of this study is our assessments are being made solely with near-surface observations and presume a wind profile [Eq. (2)] that is implicitly or explicitly relied upon (e.g., Mass et al 2002), but not well tested (cf. Stensrud 2007), in complex terrain.…”

Section: Verification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Downslope Windstorms of San Diego County. Part I: A Case Study

Yang

Fovell

2016

Monthly Weather Review

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The “Santa Ana” wind is an offshore flow that affects Southern California periodically during the winter half of the year, typically between September and May. The winds can be locally gusty, particularly in the complex terrain of San Diego County, where the winds have characteristics of downslope windstorms. These winds can cause and/or rapidly spread wildfires, the threat of which is particularly acute during the autumn season before the onset of winter rains. San Diego’s largest fires, including the Cedar fire of 2003 and Witch Creek fire of 2007, occurred during Santa Ana wind events. A case study of downslope flow during a moderately intense Santa Ana event during mid-February 2013 is presented. Motivated by the need to forecast winds impinging on electrical lines, the authors make use of an exceptionally dense network of near-surface observations in San Diego County to calibrate and verify simulations made utilizing the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model, which in turn is employed to augment the observations. Results demonstrate that this particular Santa Ana episode consists of two pulses separated by a protracted lull. During the first pulse, the downslope flow is characterized by a prominent hydraulic jumplike feature, while during the second one the flow possesses a clear temporal progression of winds downslope. WRF has skill in capturing the evolution and magnitude of the event at most locations, although most model configurations overpredict the observed sustained wind and the forecast bias is itself biased.

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Section: Verification Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Downslope Windstorms of San Diego County. Part I: A Case Study

Yang

Fovell

2016

Monthly Weather Review

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“…Dynamical downscaling consists of driving a regional climate model (RCM) by a GCM over an area of interest since decreasing grid spacing in mesoscale models generally Copyright c 2010 Royal Meteorological Society improves the realism of the results (Mass et al, 2002). This nesting technique can be one-way, so the circulations produced by the RCM do not feed back into the GCM, or two-way (Giorgi, 1990).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of indiscriminate nudging time on large and small scales in regional climate modelling: Application to the Mediterranean basin

Salameh

Drobinski

Dubos

2010

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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A regional climate model (RCM) is driven by the ERA-40 reanalyses produced by the ECMWF general circulation model (GCM) to simulate the winter 1998 climate over the Mediterranean basin. In this article, we consider the effects on internal variability of temporal nudging. This technique consists of relaxing the RCM's prognostic variables towards the GCM values within a predetermined time-scale, with the aim of disallowing large and unrealistic departures between driving and driven fields. To interpret the significant effect of time nudging on the regional climate prediction, we develop a 'toy model' basically consisting of resolving a linear transport equation with a Newtonian relaxation term. This model predicts the existence of an optimal nudging time which depends on the time-scale over which numerical errors affect significantly the accuracy of the 'regional' solution at the large spatial scales, and the typical time-scale of the small-scale phenomena that are not resolved by the GCM.

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“…Simulations with 3 km resolution using MM5 were verified in the same area (Colle et al, 1999). High-resolution (4 km) real-time forecasts using MM5 were initiated in 1998 (Mass and Kuo, 1998) and the results were reported in Colle et al (2001) and Mass et al (2002). Meanwhile, a number of field projects were designed and conducted, either immediately before or after MAP, to better understand precipitation over complex terrain, such as CALJET (California Land-falling Jets experiment, Ralph et al, 1999), PACJET (Pacific Land-falling Jets experiment, Neiman et al, 2002), IPEX (Intermountain Precipitation Experiment, Schultz et al, 2002) and IMPROVE (Improvement of Microphysical Parameterization through Observational Verification Experiment, Stoelinga et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative precipitation forecasting in the Alps: The advances achieved by the Mesoscale Alpine Programme

Richard

Buzzi

Zängl³

2007

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

107

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ABSTRACT:The improvement of Quantitative Precipitation Forecasting (QPF) in mountainous regions was a major supporting objective of the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP) project P1 devoted to the study of orographic precipitation. This paper reviews the main MAP-related achievements regarding QPF improvement and highlights the MAP impact on developing QPF research and planning future operational strategies. Recent results based on MAP case-studies, on data analysis and assimilation, on quantification of model uncertainties, and on model intercomparison and verification substantiate the progress made in recent years in improving model performance in relation to short-range, high-resolution forecasting in complex topography regions, well represented by the European Alps.

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Does Increasing Horizontal Resolution Produce More Skillful Forecasts?

Cited by 638 publications

References 51 publications

Downslope Windstorms of San Diego County. Part I: A Case Study

Downslope Windstorms of San Diego County. Part I: A Case Study

The effect of indiscriminate nudging time on large and small scales in regional climate modelling: Application to the Mediterranean basin

Quantitative precipitation forecasting in the Alps: The advances achieved by the Mesoscale Alpine Programme

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