Quantification of the Importance of Lead-Time in Non-Tornadic Severe

Andrew Mercer, Mississippi State University

Usage Details

The goal of this project is the diagnosis of lead time in non-tornadic severe weather outbreak forecasts when using a high resolution mesoscale model. The student will be working with the WRF-ARW forecast model at a high spatial and temporal resolution for 5 major non-tornadic outbreaks. Each outbreak will be simulated in initial condition ensemble mode, yielding 10 forecasts for each case at 5 varying lead times to the outbreak (24-hour, 48-hour, 72-hour, 96-hour, and 120-hour), in an effort to ascertain the sensitivity of the spread in the ensemble members to lead time. The student will be utilizing the universal post processor software to formulate severe weather diagnostic variables and will determine their spatial uncertainty metrics using the R software package. Ultimately, this project has the potential to help forecasters with outbreak forecasts by providing additional evidence as to the limit of the forecast ability of severe weather outbreaks at lead times in excess of a day.