Identification

Title

Assessing the impact of surface and wind profiler data on fog forecasting using WRF 3DVAR: An OSSE study on a dense fog event over North China

Abstract

Because fog is a high-impact weather phenomenon, there has been increased demand for its accurate prediction. Both surface data and wind profiler data possess great potential for improved fog prediction. This study aimed to quantitatively assess the impact of surface and wind profiler data on fog prediction in terms of their spatial resolutions and distributions and also to assess the relative effect of these two types of observations. A dense fog event in northern China that occurred on 20 February 2007 was studied using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model's three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVAR) system with observing system simulation experiments (OSSE). The results indicated that the incorporation of surface data has an obvious positive impact on fog forecasts, especially with respect to effective assimilation of automated weather station data. Dense planetary boundary layer (PBL) wind profilers are more beneficial for fog forecasting than troposphere wind profilers, and an even spatial distribution over a large region is superior to a localized distribution. Surface data show greater benefit for fog forecasting than wind profiler data, with a 6.6% increase of skill score as a result of the improvement of near-surface thermal stratification. Moreover, combining both types of data greatly enhances fog predictive skill, with a 13.6% increase in skill score relative to the experiment assimilating only surface data, as a result of better dynamically balanced fields of thermodynamic and kinematic variables within the PBL with the assimilation of PBL wind profiler data.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7jw8gs6

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact