TY - JOUR
T1 - Eastern U.S. verification of ensemble precipitation forecasts
AU - Sharma, Sanjib
AU - Siddique, Ridwan
AU - Balderas, Nicholas
AU - Fuentes, Jose D.
AU - Reed, Seann
AU - Ahnert, Peter
AU - Shedd, Robert
AU - Astifan, Brian
AU - Cabrera, Reggina
AU - Laing, Arlene
AU - Klein, Mark
AU - Mejia, Alfonso
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Meteorological Society.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The quality of ensemble precipitation forecasts across the eastern United States is investigated, specifically, version 2 of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Ensemble Forecast System Reforecast (GEFSRv2) and Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) system, as well as NCEP's Weather Prediction Center probabilistic quantitative precipitation forecast (WPC-PQPF) guidance. The forecasts are verified using multisensor precipitation estimates and various metrics conditioned upon seasonality, precipitation threshold, lead time, and spatial aggregation scale. The forecasts are verified, over the geographic domain of each of the four eastern River Forecasts Centers (RFCs) in the United States, by considering first 1) the three systems or guidance, using a common period of analysis (2012-13) for lead times from 1 to 3 days, and then 2) GEFSRv2 alone, using a longer period (2004-13) and lead times from 1 to 16 days. The verification results indicate that, across the eastern United States, precipitation forecast bias decreases and the skill and reliability improve as the spatial aggregation scale increases; however, all the forecasts exhibit some underforecasting bias. The skill of the forecasts is appreciably better in the cool season than in the warm one. The WPC-PQPFs tend to be superior, in terms of the correlation coefficient, relative mean error, reliability, and forecast skill scores, than both GEFSRv2 and SREF, but the performance varies with the RFC and lead time. Based on GEFSRv2, medium-range precipitation forecasts tend to have skill up to approximately day 7 relative to sampled climatology.
AB - The quality of ensemble precipitation forecasts across the eastern United States is investigated, specifically, version 2 of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Ensemble Forecast System Reforecast (GEFSRv2) and Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) system, as well as NCEP's Weather Prediction Center probabilistic quantitative precipitation forecast (WPC-PQPF) guidance. The forecasts are verified using multisensor precipitation estimates and various metrics conditioned upon seasonality, precipitation threshold, lead time, and spatial aggregation scale. The forecasts are verified, over the geographic domain of each of the four eastern River Forecasts Centers (RFCs) in the United States, by considering first 1) the three systems or guidance, using a common period of analysis (2012-13) for lead times from 1 to 3 days, and then 2) GEFSRv2 alone, using a longer period (2004-13) and lead times from 1 to 16 days. The verification results indicate that, across the eastern United States, precipitation forecast bias decreases and the skill and reliability improve as the spatial aggregation scale increases; however, all the forecasts exhibit some underforecasting bias. The skill of the forecasts is appreciably better in the cool season than in the warm one. The WPC-PQPFs tend to be superior, in terms of the correlation coefficient, relative mean error, reliability, and forecast skill scores, than both GEFSRv2 and SREF, but the performance varies with the RFC and lead time. Based on GEFSRv2, medium-range precipitation forecasts tend to have skill up to approximately day 7 relative to sampled climatology.
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U2 - 10.1175/WAF-D-16-0094.1
DO - 10.1175/WAF-D-16-0094.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85010222327
SN - 0882-8156
VL - 32
SP - 117
EP - 139
JO - Weather and Forecasting
JF - Weather and Forecasting
IS - 1
ER -