P81 WRF verification for specific needs: The DTC connection with NOAA testbeds

Fowler, Tressa, Edward Tollerud, Tara Jensen, Wally Clark, Eric Gilleland, Ligia Bernardet, and Barbara Brown, National Center for Atmospheric Research

WRF-related forecasting research at NOAA testbeds and agencies in recent years has increasingly involved phenomena that require non-standard and adaptable verification methods. Examples include forecasts for ‘atmospheric rivers’ and related extreme precipitation events investigated by the HMT, and high resolution ensemble-based severe weather forecasts intercompared during spring exercises of the HWT that are best considered as probabilistic events. The DTC has collaborated with many of these projects by facilitating verification activities and by developing verification techniques that can provide useful assessments and comparisons. For HMT and HWT, this has included new object- based verification (i.e., MODE), and for evaluation of HFIP model parameter changes, DTC comparisons have utilized enhanced estimation and display (via the MET and METViewer packages) of the uncertainty of verification results. This poster presents a few selected examples of these DTC efforts, and suggests directions that further developments might proceed in verification techniques.