Spatial verification of a regional ensemble precipitation forecasting system at the Hydrometeorological Research Center of the Russian Federation using a free verification package, MET

Abstract

Ensemble weather forecasting is a necessary tool for assessing the probabilities of weather events, alternative scenarios of their development, and forecast uncertainties. At the Hydrometeorological Research Center of the Russian Federation, a regional high-resolution ensemble system is under development with a grid mesh of 2.2 km for the central region of Russia. Consequently, developing a state-of-the-art ensemble verification system is of high priority. In this work, preliminary results of a high-resolution ensemble verification system are given for precipitation as an example. The system includes both standard probability scores and some novel spatial scores. A method for object-based diagnostic evaluation, MODE, is used as the main object-based approach. The system is based on a free verification package, METplus. Examples of scores are given.