Introduction to the NCEP Very Short Range Ensemble Forecast System (VSREF)

摘要

The NCEP Very Short Range Ensemble Forecast (VSREF) System is specially developed for aviationweather and potential NextGen applications. Its development was initiated in 2009. The VSREF system isbased on NCEP's operational Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) and North American Mesoscale (NAM) modelruns using a time-lag ensembling technique. The current domain is over the contiguous US (CONUS). TheVSREF is routinely updated every hour with hourly output through 6 hr forecast length. In the currentdeveloping stage, there are 11 aviation-weather related probabilistic products in the VSREF system,including icing, clear air turbulence (CAT), visibility, fog, ceiling, low level wind shear, jet stream, surfacewind gust, simulated reflectivity, convection, and freezing height. There is an experimental web page todisplay these products for demonstration. In this paper, more detailed information about the NCEP VSREFincluding its system configuration, product generation, verification and future plan will be described.