The Use of the METplus Verification Capability in Both Operations and Research Organizations

Verification and validation activities are critical for the success of modelling and prediction efforts at organizations around the world, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US military, commercial entities, and academia. Over a decade ago, the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) released a suite of community tools called the Model Evaluation Tools (MET). Under the auspices of the US Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) program an endeavor was undertaken to develop a comprehensive verification capability for the Unified Forecast System based on MET. Development of this extended capability, called METplus, started in 2015. A team of developers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NOAA, and DTC have been working together to rapidly address the needs of both the research and operations communities to provide and operations-to-research-to-operations (O2R2O) tool.

The METplus system consists of several components, including a C++/Fortran code-base (MET), for the computation of verification statistics based on gridded forecasts and either a gridded analysis or point-based observations. The system also incorporates a database and display system (METviewer) for aggregating statistics and plotting graphical results. These tools are designed to be highly flexible to allow for quick adaption to meet additional evaluation and diagnostic needs. A suite of python wrappers have been implemented to facilitate a quick set-up and implementation of the system, and to enhance the pre-existing plotting capabilities.

This presentation will provide an update on the current status of METplus and how it is being applied to verification needs at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), Weather Prediction Center (WPC), Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and others. It will highlight specific applications of METplus to a range of temporal (hourly forecasts to subseasonal-to-seasonal) and spatial scales (convection allowing to mesoscale regional to global).