MONITORING COAMPS SURFACE FORECAST QUALITY

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MONITORING COAMPS SURFACE FORECAST QUALITY G.
Love1 and S. Swadley2   1 Naval Research
Laboratory, Marine Meteorology Division,
Monterey, CA 93943, love_at_nrlmry.navy.mil 2 METOC
Consulting, Monterey, CA 93943,
swadley_at_nrlmry.navy.mil
The METQC monitor provides top-level signaling of
forecast quality with links to maps and timelines
of station differences configured in a classic
drill-down schema.
Forecast innovation vectors are graded both in
terms of exceeding set caution and warning
thresholds and in terms of a confidence level
Individual stations are further graded in terms
and frequencies relative to being best or worst
at a given time.
The COAMPS innovation vector is the difference
between the observation and the COAMPS forecast
interpolated to the location and time of the
observation.
The confidence history over the West Coast
reveals the hourly confidence level of the
reporting group of stations.
Since forecasts can lead or lag, the phase of
each station is calculated and plotted based upon
the offset time with the highest
forecast-to-observation history correlation.
The scoring distribution and related innovation
histogram provide insight into why the confidence
is low, due either to a large bias, a large
spread or bimodal behavior.
The METQC monitor has revealed terrain, coastal,
diurnal, phase and seasonal effects in COAMPS
forecast quality.
Maps of innovation differences, confidence levels
and phase offsets can also be overlaid with model
grids, satellite images and radar scans to aid
diagnosis of observed forecast quality.
COAMPS and COAMPS-OS are registered trademarks
of the Naval Research Laboratory