Evaluating U.S. East Coast Winter Storms in a Multimodel Ensemble Using EOF and Clustering Approaches

Abstract

AbstractEmpirical orthogonal function (EOF) and fuzzy clustering tools were applied to generate and validate scenarios in operational ensemble prediction systems (EPSs) for U.S. East Coast winter storms. The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) EPSs were validated in their ability to capture the analysis scenarios for historical East Coast cyclone cases at lead times of 1–9 days. The ECMWF ensemble has the best performance for the medium- to extended-range forecasts. During this time frame, NCEP and CMC did not perform as well, but a combination of the two models helps reduce the missing rate and alleviates the underdispersion. All ensembles are underdispersed at all ranges, with combined ensembles being less underdispersed than the individual EPSs. The number of outside-of-envelope cases increases with lead time. For a majority of the cases beyond the short range, the verifying analysis does not lie within the ensemble mean group of the multimodel ensemble or within the same direction indicated by any of the individual model means, suggesting that all possible scenarios need to be taken into account. Using the EOF patterns to validate the cyclone properties, the NCEP model tends to show less intensity and displacement biases during 1–3-day lead time, while the ECMWF model has the smallest biases during 4–6 days. Nevertheless, the ECMWF forecast position tends to be biased toward the southwest of the other two models and the analysis.