Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1610.07676

Analysis of mesoscale forecasts using ensemble methods

Markus Gross
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Mesoscale forecasts are now routinely performed as elements of operational forecasts and their outputs do appear convincing. However, despite their realistic appearance at times the comparison to observations is less favorable. At the grid scale these forecasts often do not compare well with observations. This is partly due to the chaotic system underlying the weather. Another key problem is that it is impossible to evaluate the risk of making decisions based on these forecasts because they do not provide a measure of confidence. Ensembles provide this information in the ensemble spread and quartiles. However, running global ensembles at the meso or sub mesoscale involves substantial computational resources. National centers do run such ensembles, but the subject of this publication is a method which requires significantly less computation. The ensemble enhanced mesoscale system presented here aims not at the creation of an improved mesoscale forecast model. Also it is not to create an improved ensemble system. Here an ensemble is created from one mesoscale forecast with the aim of interrogating the probabilities of the forecast. The diagnostics developed in this publication is the generation of the confidence intervals via cumulative probability density functions (pdf), detection of extrema and selective ensembles. The subject of this publication is the analysis of those diagnostics, their dependence on the domain size of the ensemble and the number of ensemble members. The analysis strategies introduced are termed: subgrid ensemble enhanced mesoscale forecast, extreme value analysis of the ensemble pdf and observation constrained ensemble forecast.

Explore related subjects

physics.ao-ph

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Markus Gross. 2016-10-24. Analysis of mesoscale forecasts using ensemble methods. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07676

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Windowed Envelope Statistics for Time-Domain Significant Wave Height Estimation From HF Radar

Significant wave height (SWH) retrieval from high-frequency (HF) radar typically relies on a weak second-order Doppler continuum that is sensitive to noise, interference, and spectral leakage. This letter presents a Windowed Envelope Statistics Estimator (WESE) that operates directly on beam-formed time-domain voltages. A second-order term obtained from a Neumann expansion of the rough-surface field equation motivates quadratic compensation of localized radar features. WESE extracts the mean, standard deviation, or variance from overlapping windows of the in-phase, quadrature, or envelope-magnitude sequence, followed by quadratic compensation, rank ordering, least-squares regression, and causal smoothing. Evaluation used 335 synchronized hourly observations from a 13.385 MHz, 12-element WERA system at Argentia, Newfoundland and Labrador. The optimal configuration used quadrature variance, a 16-sample window, 896 retained chronological samples, and 30-h smoothing, achieving an RMSE of 0.152 m and a Pearson correlation of 0.978. This represents RMSE reductions of 32.1% and 18.7% relative to previously reported linear and second-order compensated ordered-statistics models, respectively. The results demonstrate robust time-domain SWH estimation without explicit Doppler-spectrum construction.

physics.ao-ph↗
arXiv2026

KiloDA: Reconstructing kilometer-scale near-surface wind states from sparse station observations

Accurate kilometer-scale near-surface winds are important for understanding atmospheric processes over complex terrain, yet remain difficult to reconstruct from sparse and unevenly distributed observations. Here we introduce KiloDA, a diffusion framework for hourly kilometer-scale wind reconstruction from surface stations. KiloDA learns the statistical distribution and spatial structure of wind fields from historical 3-km Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model forecasts. At each reconstruction time, no contemporaneous WRF field is used. Instead, station observations provide the only constraints on the current atmospheric state and guide posterior sampling from the learned prior. In idealized WRF experiments, KiloDA recovers localized wind structures when only 0.24% of grid cells are observed and shows an overall advantage over conventional interpolation across terrain conditions and wind speed regimes. This capability largely transfers to real observations. In a fully withheld region, KiloDA reduces the median wind speed root mean square error (RMSE) by 19% relative to ERA5 reanalysis, using only observations outside the region, with the largest improvements over high-elevation and high-relief terrain. A random station holdout further confirms that this advantage extends across different complex-terrain locations and holdout configurations. These results show that historical model archives can provide useful structural knowledge for reconstructing kilometer-scale wind fields from sparse observations without requiring an accurate model estimate of the current atmospheric state.

physics.ao-ph↗