P34     Development of new tropical cyclone tools within METplus.

Newman, Kathryn, John Halley Gotway, Randy Bullock, David Fillmore, Tracy Hertneky, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), Evan Kalina, U. of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the Global Systems Division (GSD) of the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research laboratory (NOAA ESRL) and DTC, Mrinal Biswas, NCAR and DTC, Evelyn Grell, CIRES at Physical Sciences Division of NOAA ESRL and DTC, and Tara Jensen, NCAR and DTC

The Model Evaluation Tools – Tropical Cyclone (MET-TC) was first developed in 2012 to aid in tropical cyclone forecast evaluation and verification. The initial capabilities for MET-TC provide a standard set of verification metrics and comprehensive output statistics, which can be used for homogeneous comparisons of operational and experimental track and intensity forecasts. The tools have expanded over time to include rapid intensification verification, specialized masking and shifting logic specified by track, and feature relative capabilities. New tropical cyclone tools are under development, planned for release in MET v8.2. These tools will enable users to perform storm-relative model evaluations that are commonly used in tropical cyclone research. The resulting tool will allow users to normalize by the radius of maximum winds, derive tangential and radial wind, and will include graphical capabilities through a METplus use case. This presentation will introduce the new tropical cyclone tools and demonstrate their use with regional and global model output of tropical cyclone cases. Finally, additional tropical cyclone verification capabilities on the horizon, including genesis verification and support for reading Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS) diagnostics files will be described.