Verification of Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts from Operational Numerical Weather Prediction Models over Australia

Abstract

Abstract Real-time gridded 24-h quantitative precipitation forecasts from seven operational NWP models are verified over the Australian continent. All forecasts have been mapped to a 1° latitude–longitude grid and have been verified against an operational daily rainfall analysis, mapped to the same grid. The verification focuses on two large subregions: the northern tropical monsoon regime and the southeastern subtropical regime. Statistics are presented of the bias score, probability of detection, and false alarm ratio for a range of rainfall threshold values. The basic measure of skill used in this study, however, is the Hanssen and Kuipers (HK) score and its two components: accuracy for events and accuracy for nonevents. For both regimes the operational models tend to overestimate rainfall in summer and to underestimate it in winter. In the southeastern region the models have HK scores ranging from 0.5 to 0.7, and easily outperform a forecast of persistence. Thus for the current operational NWP models,...