ESRL/PSD Seminar Series

PSD Flash Seminar
Statistical Post-Processing of GEFS Forecasts for Precipitation

Michael Scheuerer
NOAA/ESRL/PSD Climate Analysis Branch

ABSTRACT

Statistical post-processing of dynamical forecast ensembles is an essential component of weather forecasting. In this talk we consider ensemble forecasts for precipitation accumulations over the Contiguous United States by the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS). Leveraging NOAA's second generation reforecast dataset we systematically develop a post-processing method that generates calibrated, predictive probability distributions for precipitation accumulations. Both climatological (unconditional) distributions of precipitation accumulations and distributions conditional on the ensemble forecasts are approximated by shifted gamma distributions that are left-censored at zero. A regression-type approach with non-homogeneous errors relates the distribution parameters to statistics of the ensemble forecasts. We demonstrate our method's ability to generate reliable forecasts with lead times up to a few days, and we discuss some remaining challenges that need to be addressed in future work.
2A-305
Tuesday, Nov 12 2014
2:00pm

Seminar Coordinator: Barbara.S.Herrlie@noaa.gov

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