UTCI as the NWP model ALADIN (CHMI) output – first experiences

2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Martin Novák

The article includes a summary of basic information about the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) calculation by the numerical weather prediction (NWP) model ALADIN of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI). Examples of operational outputs for weather forecasters in the CHMI are shown in the first part of this work. The second part includes results of a comparison of computed UTCI values by ALADIN for selected place with UTCI values computed from real measured meteorological data from the same place.

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 594
Author(s):  
Ralph R. Burton ◽  
Mark J. Woodhouse ◽  
Alan M. Gadian ◽  
Stephen D. Mobbs

In this paper, a state-of the art numerical weather prediction (NWP) model is used to simulate the near-field plume of a Plinian-type volcanic eruption. The NWP model is run at very high resolution (of the order of 100 m) and includes a representation of physical processes, including turbulence and buoyancy, that are essential components of eruption column dynamics. Results are shown that illustrate buoyant gas plume dynamics in an atmosphere at rest and in an atmosphere with background wind, and we show that these results agree well with those from theoretical models in the quiescent atmosphere. For wind-blown plumes, we show that features observed in experimental and natural settings are reproduced in our model. However, when comparing with predictions from an integral model using existing entrainment closures there are marked differences. We speculate that these are signatures of a difference in turbulent mixing for uniform and shear flow profiles in a stratified atmosphere. A more complex implementation is given to show that the model may also be used to examine the dispersion of heavy volcanic gases such as sulphur dioxide. Starting from the standard version of the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model, we show that minimal modifications are needed in order to model volcanic plumes. This suggests that the modified NWP model can be used in the forecasting of plume evolution during future volcanic events, in addition to providing a virtual laboratory for the testing of hypotheses regarding plume behaviour.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2758
Author(s):  
Stuart Fox

The Ice Cloud Imager (ICI) will be launched on the next generation of EUMETSAT polar-orbiting weather satellites and make passive observations between 183 and 664 GHz which are sensitive to scattering from cloud ice. These observations have the potential to improve weather forecasts through direct assimilation using "all-sky" methods which have been successfully applied to microwave observations up to 200 GHz in current operational systems. This requires sufficiently accurate representations of cloud ice in both numerical weather prediction (NWP) and radiative transfer models. In this study, atmospheric fields from a high-resolution NWP model are used to drive radiative transfer simulations using the Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator (ARTS) and a recently released database of cloud ice optical properties. The simulations are evaluated using measurements between 89 and 874 GHz from five case studies of ice and mixed-phase clouds observed by the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) BAe-146 research aircraft. The simulations are strongly sensitive to the assumed cloud ice optical properties, but by choosing an appropriate ice crystal model it is possible to simulate realistic brightness temperatures over the full range of sub-millimetre frequencies. This suggests that sub-millimetre observations have the potential to be assimilated into NWP models using the all-sky method.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Aichinger-Rosenberger ◽  
Natalia Hanna ◽  
Robert Weber

<p>Electromagnetic signals, as broadcasted by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), are delayed when travelling through the Earth’s atmosphere due to the presence of water vapour. Parametrisations of this delay, most prominently the Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) parameter, have been studied extensively and proven to provide substantial benefits for atmospheric research and especially the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model performance. Typically, regional/global networks of static reference stations are utilized to derive ZTD along with other parameters of interest in GNSS analysis (e.g. station coordinates). Results are typically used as a contributing data source for determining the initial conditions of NWP models, a process referred to as Data Assimilation (DA).</p><p>This contribution goes beyond the approach outlined above as it shows how reasonable tropospheric parameters can be derived from highly kinematic, single-frequency (SF) GNSS data. The utilized data was gathered at trains by the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and processed using the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique. Although the special nature of the observations yields several challenges concerning data processing, we show that reasonable results for ZTD estimates can be obtained for all four analysed test cases by using different PPP processing strategies. Comparison with ZTD calculated from ERA5 reanalysis data yields a very high correlation and an overall agreement from the low millimetre-range up to 5 cm, depending on solution and analysed travelling track. We also present the first tests of assimilation into a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model which show the reasonable quality of the results as between 30-100 % of the observations are accepted by the model. Furthermore, we investigate means to transfer the developed ideas to an operational stage in order to exploit the huge benefits (horizontal/temporal resolution) of this special dataset for operational weather forecasting. </p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir M. Krasnopolsky ◽  
Michael S. Fox-Rabinovitz ◽  
Alexei A. Belochitski

A novel approach based on the neural network (NN) ensemble technique is formulated and used for development of a NN stochastic convection parameterization for climate and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. This fast parameterization is built based on learning from data simulated by a cloud-resolving model (CRM) initialized with and forced by the observed meteorological data available for 4-month boreal winter from November 1992 to February 1993. CRM-simulated data were averaged and processed to implicitly define a stochastic convection parameterization. This parameterization is learned from the data using an ensemble of NNs. The NN ensemble members are trained and tested. The inherent uncertainty of the stochastic convection parameterization derived following this approach is estimated. The newly developed NN convection parameterization has been tested in National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). It produced reasonable and promising decadal climate simulations for a large tropical Pacific region. The extent of the adaptive ability of the developed NN parameterization to the changes in the model environment is briefly discussed. This paper is devoted to a proof of concept and discusses methodology, initial results, and the major challenges of using the NN technique for developing convection parameterizations for climate and NWP models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2279-2298
Author(s):  
Guillaume Thomas ◽  
Jean-François Mahfouf ◽  
Thibaut Montmerle

Abstract. This paper presents the potential of nonlinear and linear versions of an observation operator for simulating polarimetric variables observed by weather radars. These variables, deduced from the horizontally and vertically polarized backscattered radiations, give information about the shape, the phase and the distributions of hydrometeors. Different studies in observation space are presented as a first step toward their inclusion in a variational data assimilation context, which is not treated here. Input variables are prognostic variables forecasted by the AROME-France numerical weather prediction (NWP) model at convective scale, including liquid and solid hydrometeor contents. A nonlinear observation operator, based on the T-matrix method, allows us to simulate the horizontal and the vertical reflectivities (ZHH and ZVV), the differential reflectivity ZDR, the specific differential phase KDP and the co-polar correlation coefficient ρHV. To assess the uncertainty of such simulations, perturbations have been applied to input parameters of the operator, such as dielectric constant, shape and orientation of the scatterers. Statistics of innovations, defined by the difference between simulated and observed values, are then performed. After some specific filtering procedures, shapes close to a Gaussian distribution have been found for both reflectivities and for ZDR, contrary to KDP and ρHV. A linearized version of this observation operator has been obtained by its Jacobian matrix estimated with the finite difference method. This step allows us to study the sensitivity of polarimetric variables to hydrometeor content perturbations, in the model geometry as well as in the radar one. The polarimetric variables ZHH and ZDR appear to be good candidates for hydrometeor initialization, while KDP seems to be useful only for rain contents. Due to the weak sensitivity of ρHV, its use in data assimilation is expected to be very challenging.


Author(s):  
Soo-Hyun Kim ◽  
Hye-Yeong Chun ◽  
Dan-Bi Lee ◽  
Jung-Hoon Kim ◽  
Robert D. Sharman

AbstractBased on a convective gravity wave drag parameterization scheme in a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model, previously proposed near-cloud turbulence (NCT) diagnostics for better detecting turbulence near convection are tested and evaluated by using global in situ flight data and outputs from operational global NWP model of the Korea Meteorological Administration for one year (from December 2016 to November 2017). For comparison, eleven widely used clear air turbulence (CAT) diagnostics currently used in operational NWP-based aviation turbulence forecasting systems are separately computed. For selected cases, NCT diagnostics predict more accurately localized turbulence events over convective regions with better intensity, which is clearly distinguished from the turbulence areas diagnosed by conventional CAT diagnostics that they mostly failed to forecast with broad areas and low magnitudes. Although overall performance of NCT diagnostics for whole one year is lower than conventional CAT diagnostics due to the fact that NCT diagnostics exclusively focus on the isolated NCT events, adding the NCT diagnostics to CAT diagnostics improves the performance of aviation turbulence forecasting. Especially in the summertime, performance in terms of an area under the curve (AUC) based on probability of detection statistics is the best (AUC = 0.837 with a 4% increase, compared to conventional CAT forecasts) when the mean of all CAT and NCT diagnostics is used, while performance in terms of root mean square error is the best when the maximum among combined CAT and single NCT diagnostic is used. This implies that including NCT diagnostics to currently used NWP-based aviation turbulence forecasting systems should be beneficial for safety of air travel.


2012 ◽  
Vol 140 (8) ◽  
pp. 2706-2719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma V. Bennitt ◽  
Adrian Jupp

Abstract Zenith total delay (ZTD) observations derived from ground-based GPS receivers have been assimilated operationally into the Met Office North Atlantic and European (NAE) numerical weather prediction (NWP) model since 2007. Assimilation trials were performed using the Met Office NAE NWP model at both 12- and 24-km resolution to assess the impact of ZTDs on forecasts. ZTDs were found generally to increase relative humidity in the analysis, increasing the humidity bias compared to radiosonde observations, which persisted through the forecasts at some vertical levels. Improvements to cloud forecasts were also identified. Assimilation of ZTDs using both three-dimensional and four-dimensional variational data assimilation (3D-Var/4D-Var) was investigated, and it is found that assimilation at 4D-Var does not deliver any clear benefit over 3D-Var in the periods studied with the NAE model. This paper summarizes the methods used to assimilate ZTDs at the Met Office and presents the results of impact trials performed prior to operational assimilation. Future improvements to the assimilation methods are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 97 (11) ◽  
pp. 2149-2161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Ingleby ◽  
Patricia Pauley ◽  
Alexander Kats ◽  
Jeff Ator ◽  
Dennis Keyser ◽  
...  

Abstract Some real-time radiosonde reports are now available with higher vertical resolution and higher precision than the alphanumeric TEMP code. There are also extra metadata; for example, the software version may indicate whether humidity corrections have been applied at the station. Numerical weather prediction (NWP) centers and other users need to start using the new Binary Universal Form for Representation of Meteorological Data (BUFR) reports because the alphanumeric codes are being withdrawn. TEMP code has various restrictions and complexities introduced when telecommunication speed and costs were overriding concerns; one consequence is minor temperature rounding errors. In some ways BUFR reports are simpler: the whole ascent should be contained in a single report. BUFR reports can also include the time and location of each level; an ascent takes about 2 h and the balloon can drift 100 km or more laterally. This modernization is the largest and most complex change to the worldwide reporting of radiosonde observations for many years; international implementation is taking longer than planned and is very uneven. The change brings both opportunities and challenges. The biggest challenge is that the number and quality of the data from radiosonde ascents may suffer if the assessment of the BUFR reports and two-way communication between data producers and data users are not given the priority they require. It is possible that some countries will only attempt to replicate the old reports in the new format, not taking advantage of the benefits, which include easier treatment of radiosonde drift and a better understanding of instrument and processing details, as well as higher resolution.


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