Evaluation of Probabilistic Snow Forecasts for Winter Weather Operations at Intermountain West Airports

IF 3 3区地球科学 Q2 METEOROLOGY & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

Weather and Forecasting Pub Date : 2023-05-22 DOI:10.1175/waf-d-22-0170.1

Dana M. Uden, M. S. Wandishin, P. Schlatter, Michael Kraus

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

This work set out to assess the performance of four forecast systems (the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF), High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Ensemble (HRRRE), the National Blend of Models (NBM), and the Probabilistic Snow Accumulation product (PSA) from the National Weather Service (NWS) Boulder, CO Weather Forecast Office) when predicting snowfall events around the Intermountain West to advise winter weather decision-making processes at Denver International Airport. The goal was to provide airport personnel and the Boulder NWS Forecast Office with operationally-relevant verification results on the timing and severity of these events so they are able to make better-informed decisions to minimize negative impacts of storms. Forecasts of snow events using various probability thresholds and a climatological snow-to-liquid ratio of 15:1 were evaluated against Meteorological Aerodrome Reports (METARs) for 24-hour periods following four decision-making times spaced equally throughout the day. For the ensembles, a frequentist approach was used: the forecast probability equaled the percentage of ensemble members that predicted a snow event. The results show that the NBM had the best timing of snow events out of the products while all the products tended to over-forecast snow amount. Additionally, NBM had fewer snow events and rarely had high probabilities of snow, unlike the other forecast products.

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西部山间机场冬季天气运行的概率降雪预报评估

这项工作旨在评估四个预报系统（短程综合预报（SREF）、高分辨率快速刷新综合预报（HRRRE）、国家混合模型（NBM）和美国国家气象局博尔德的概率积雪产品（PSA））的性能，CO Weather Forecast Office），为丹佛国际机场的冬季天气决策过程提供建议。目标是向机场人员和博尔德NWS预报办公室提供有关这些事件发生时间和严重程度的操作相关验证结果，以便他们能够做出更明智的决定，最大限度地减少风暴的负面影响。根据气象机场报告（METARs），使用各种概率阈值和15:1的气候雪液比对降雪事件的预测进行了24小时的评估，随后在一天中平均间隔四个决策时间。对于合奏团，使用了频率论方法：预测概率等于预测降雪事件的合奏团成员的百分比。结果表明，在所有产品中，NBM具有最佳的降雪时间，而所有产品都倾向于高估降雪量。此外，与其他预测产品不同，NBM的降雪事件较少，降雪概率也很少高。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Weather and Forecasting 地学-气象与大气科学

CiteScore

5.20

自引率

17.20%

发文量

131

审稿时长

6-12 weeks

期刊介绍： Weather and Forecasting (WAF) (ISSN: 0882-8156; eISSN: 1520-0434) publishes research that is relevant to operational forecasting. This includes papers on significant weather events, forecasting techniques, forecast verification, model parameterizations, data assimilation, model ensembles, statistical postprocessing techniques, the transfer of research results to the forecasting community, and the societal use and value of forecasts. The scope of WAF includes research relevant to forecast lead times ranging from short-term “nowcasts” through seasonal time scales out to approximately two years.