Identification

Title

Impacts of targeted AERI and Doppler lidar wind retrievals on short-term forecasts of the initiation and early evolution of thunderstorms

Abstract

The ability of Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) and Doppler lidar (DL) wind profile observations to impact short-term forecasts of convection is explored by assimilating retrievals into a partially cycled convection-allowing ensemble analysis and forecast system. AERI and DL retrievals were obtained over 12 days using a mobile platform that was deployed in the preconvective and near-storm environments of thunderstorms during the afternoon in the U.S. Great Plains. The observation locations were guided by real-time ensemble sensitivity analysis (ESA) fields. AERI retrievals of temperature and dewpoint and DL retrievals of the horizontal wind components were assimilated into a control experiment that only assimilated conventional observations. Using the fractions skill score within 25-km neighborhoods, it is found that the assimilation of the AERI and DL retrievals results in far more times when the forecasts are improved than degraded in the 6-h forecast period. However, statistical confidence in the improvements often is not high and little to no relationships between the ESA fields and the actual changes in spread and skill is found. But, the focus on convective initiation and early convective evolution-a challenging forecast problem-and the fact that frequent improvements were seen despite observations from only one system over a limited period, provides encouragement to continue exploring the benefits of ground-based profilers to supplement the current upper-air observing system for severe weather forecasting applications.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d72b922b

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

2019-04-01T00:00:00Z

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