User-Responsive Diagnostic Forecast Evaluation Approaches: Application to Tropical Cyclone Predictions

Abstract

Abstract The Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP; renamed the “Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program” in 2017) was established by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2007 with a goal of improving tropical cyclone (TC) track and intensity predictions. A major focus of HFIP has been to increase the quality of guidance products for these parameters that are available to forecasters at the National Weather Service National Hurricane Center (NWS/NHC). One HFIP effort involved the demonstration of an operational decision process, named Stream 1.5, in which promising experimental versions of numerical weather prediction models were selected for TC forecast guidance. The selection occurred every year from 2010 to 2014 in the period preceding the hurricane season (defined as August–October), and was based on an extensive verification exercise of retrospective TC forecasts from candidate experimental models run over previous hurricane seasons. As part of this process, user-responsive verification questions were identified via discussions between NHC staff and forecast verification experts, with additional questions considered each year. A suite of statistically meaningful verification approaches consisting of traditional and innovative methods was developed to respond to these questions. Two examples of the application of the Stream 1.5 evaluations are presented, and the benefits of this approach are discussed. These benefits include the ability to provide information to forecasters and others that is relevant for their decision-making processes, via the selection of models that meet forecast quality standards and are meaningful for demonstration to forecasters in the subsequent hurricane season; clarification of user-responsive strengths and weaknesses of the selected models; and identification of paths to model improvement. Significance Statement The Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) tropical cyclone (TC) forecast evaluation effort led to innovations in TC predictions as well as new capabilities to provide more meaningful and comprehensive information about model performance to forecast users. Such an effort—to clearly specify the needs of forecasters and clarify how forecast improvements should be measured in a “user-oriented” framework—is rare. This project provides a template for one approach to achieving that goal.