Identification

Title

An OSSE study of the impact of Micropulse Differential Absorption Lidar (MPD) water vapor profiles on convective weather forecasting

Abstract

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Montana State University jointly developed water vapor micropulse differential absorption lidars (MPDs) that are a significant advance in eye-safe, unattended, lidar-based water vapor remote sensing. MPD is designed to provide continuous vertical water vapor profiles with high vertical (150 m) and temporal resolution (5 min) in the lower troposphere. This study aims to investigate MPD observation impacts and the scientific significance of MPDs for convective weather analyses and predictions using observation system simulation experiments (OSSEs). In this study, the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) and the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-ARW) Model are used to conduct OSSEs for a case study of a mesoscale convective system (MCS) observed during the Plains Elevated Convection At Night (PECAN) experiment. A poor-performing control simulation that was drawn from a 40-member ensemble at 3-km resolution is markedly improved by assimilation of simulated observations drawn from a more skillful simulation that served as the nature run at 1-km resolution. In particular, assimilating surface observations corrected surface warm front structure errors, while MPD observations remedied errors in low- to midlevel moisture ahead of the MCS. Collectively, these analyses changes led to markedly improved short-term predictions of convection initiation, evolution, and precipitation of the MCS in the simulations on 15 July 2015. For this case study, the OSSE results indicate that a more dense MPD network results in better prediction performance for convective precipitation while degrading light precipitation prediction performance due to an imbalance of the analysis at large scales.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7vt1wxd

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-10-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

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Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact