Performance of Operational Objective 0-6 H Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts Relative to Manual and Model Generated Forecasts: A Preliminary Assessment

摘要

The Techniques Development Laboratory (TDL) has recently developed and implemented at the National Meteorological Center (NMC) an objective system that produces 0-6 and 3-9 h quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF). The forecasts are currently issued three times daily after the 1200, 1800, and 0000 GMT surface data observation times during the spring summer, and fall seasons. The forecasts are available on the National Weather Service's (NWS's) Automation of Field Operations and Services system in probability and categorical form, as described in National Weather Service (1987). The primary purpose of the study was to examine how the performance of the new TDL objective QPF's compared with the manual and model QPF's and, in essence, see whether these forecasts are able to improve on existing centralized QPF's by updating with the most recent observed data. A secondary objective was to see how the NMC manual, LFM, and NGM QPF's performed relative to one another.