The spatial verification method intercomparison project

One of the main themes of this Weather and Forecasting conference is to assess the ability to analyze and predict significant weather events. This cannot be efficiently done without a systematic approach to verification. As our ability to simulate high impact weather has advanced, new verification techniques have arisen to supplement the traditional grid-point to grid-point approaches. It is the task of the Spatial Methods Intercomparison Project to highlight and compare these new methods and to illustrate their unique capabilities. Through workshops and collaborative papers we have started this task, and at this conference we will summarize the results of applying each category of verification method to a common dataset. Categories include: traditional approach, feature-based, neighborhood, scale-separation, and field deformation.