A Mesoscale Analysis of Record

The Office of Science and Technology of the National Weather Service (NWS) is facilitating the development of real-time and retrospective mesoscale objective analyses. This effort is motivated in part by the ongoing effort of the NWS to provide forecasts out to 7 days, at up to hourly temporal resolution, on a fine-resolution grid. The National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) has a nominal grid-spacing of 5 km across the United States and represents a blend of objective forecast guidance and forecaster edits. The NWS has an immediate and critical need to produce real-time and retrospective analyses at high spatial and temporal resolution in order to facilitate the creation of the NDFD forecasts as well as verify their accuracy. The term “Analysis of Record (AOR)” has been used to describe such analyses.

The AOR is, however, not solely a need of the NWS. The Global Earth Observation System of Systems reflects the goals of many national and international agencies to collect, synthesize, and deliver environmental information for a variety of societal needs. The AOR approach is one means to integrate data collected from a variety of sources for many weather and climate applications. Accurate high-resolutions analyses would help to form the basic building blocks of a climate database to help assess the impacts of climate change on a regional scale.

The status of the AOR project will be reviewed and potential partnerships with the climate community will be addressed.