Impact of New York State Mesonet Profiler Observations on the Skill of High Impact Weather Predictions in New York State

The New York State (NYS) Mesonet consists of 126 surface weather stations across the state with 17 of the sites also instrumented with active and passive profiler systems. The NYS Mesonet (NYSM) is the first and only state-run network in the USA, that includes a combination of surface stations, Doppler wind lidars (DWL) and thermodynamic profiles from Microwave Radiometers (MWR). NYSM's continuous and extensive observations from the surface to the lower atmosphere have a wide range of applications in air quality and human health, forecasting of severe storms, and predicting renewable energy production. In this study we will assess the impact of the MWR thermodynamic profiles in conjunction with DWL wind profiles on the prediction of high-impact weather in the NYS.

This presentation will provide results of assimilating the surface station data and the wind and thermodynamic profiles from the current NYSM. The impact of NYSM is evaluated for a one high impact weather case that has large uncertainties in analysis with respect to low-level temperature, moisture and wind variability to analyze the impact of current NYSM observations on predictive skill. The Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) and the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-ARW) are used to conduct data assimilation experiments. The detailed method will be presented along with initial results of data denial experiments.