TY - JOUR
T1 - The regime dependence of optimally weighted ensemble model consensus forecasts of surface temperature
AU - Greybush, Steven J.
AU - Haupt, Sue Ellen
AU - Young, George S.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Previous methods for creating consensus forecasts weight individual ensemble members based upon their relative performance over the previous N days, implicitly making a short-term persistence assumption about the underlying flow regime. A postprocessing scheme in which model performance is linked to underlying weather regimes could improve the skill of deterministic ensemble model consensus forecasts. Here, principal component analysis of several synopticm- and mesoscale fields from the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset provides an objective means for characterizing atmospheric regimes. Clustering techniques, including K-means and a genetic algorithm, are developed that use the resulting principal components to distinguish among the weather regimes. This pilot study creates a weighted consensus from 48-h surface temperature predictions produced by the University of Washington Mesoscale Ensemble, a variedmodel (differing physics and parameterization schemes) multianalysis ensemble with eight members. Different optimal weights are generated for each weather regime. A second regime-dependent consensus technique uses linear regression to predict the relative performance of the ensemble members based upon the principal components. Consensus forecasts obtained by the regime-dependent schemes are compared using cross validation with traditional N-day ensemble consensus forecasts for four locations in the Pacific Northwest, and show improvement over methods that rely on the short-term persistence assumption.
AB - Previous methods for creating consensus forecasts weight individual ensemble members based upon their relative performance over the previous N days, implicitly making a short-term persistence assumption about the underlying flow regime. A postprocessing scheme in which model performance is linked to underlying weather regimes could improve the skill of deterministic ensemble model consensus forecasts. Here, principal component analysis of several synopticm- and mesoscale fields from the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset provides an objective means for characterizing atmospheric regimes. Clustering techniques, including K-means and a genetic algorithm, are developed that use the resulting principal components to distinguish among the weather regimes. This pilot study creates a weighted consensus from 48-h surface temperature predictions produced by the University of Washington Mesoscale Ensemble, a variedmodel (differing physics and parameterization schemes) multianalysis ensemble with eight members. Different optimal weights are generated for each weather regime. A second regime-dependent consensus technique uses linear regression to predict the relative performance of the ensemble members based upon the principal components. Consensus forecasts obtained by the regime-dependent schemes are compared using cross validation with traditional N-day ensemble consensus forecasts for four locations in the Pacific Northwest, and show improvement over methods that rely on the short-term persistence assumption.
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U2 - 10.1175/2008WAF2007078.1
DO - 10.1175/2008WAF2007078.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:65549129447
SN - 0882-8156
VL - 23
SP - 1146
EP - 1161
JO - Weather and Forecasting
JF - Weather and Forecasting
IS - 6
ER -