Ukmo Model Strength/weaknesses Documentation

[johnhan61]

I'm looking for any sort of valid documented strengths or weaknesses associated with the UKMO global and meso models. We use the UKMO global main exclusively as our model of choice here and can't seem to find too much documentation of this nature. I'm specifically looking for practical adjustements that can be made to model output at the TAF level. Can any of you point me in the right direction?

thanks

John Hancock

SAIC Senior Training Administrator

21st Operational Weather Squadron

USAF Sembach AB, Germany

[Nick F]

Hi Johnhan61, so far I've found a few links that Brickfielder, a N-W team member posted a while back, from the Global Climate and Weather Modeling branch of NOAA which has mean anomaly correlations UKMO, GFS, ECM, GEM and other models:

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/STATS/STATS.html

Also you could look at Subjective List of Model Performance Characteristics from the NOAA website which can be found here:

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/mdlbias/biastext.shtml

[johnhan61]

Looks great Nick, thanks. I'm looking at the link now - a bit hefty though. I'm sure we could "gleen" (if that's a word) some practical applications from it. I'm hoping to find documentation of this type that a TAF writer could translate to specific forecast reasoning:

".....during summer months, under the following flow (fill in the blanks), the model tends to warm the upper cold pocket too quickly at T+36 therefore minimizing the thunderstorm potential in that region. You should adjust model output by cooling these thermal pockets by 10 - 15 degrees and re-evaluate convective potential based on corrected upper level temperatures...."

I made that whole thingup but that's roughly what we're trying to pin down. If anyone out there has seen or developed this sort of study, I'd appreciate being pointed in that direction>

[Nick F]

There are some Met Office Forecasting Research Reports that have good meteorological analysis and verification of NWP modeling in different aspects of forecasting and some can be downloaded in PDF form on the link below:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/nwp/p...eports/fr.html#