Real-time forecasting for New York City and its surroundings, with emphasis on sea breezes and other coastal circulations

The Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) within the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is running a real-time forecast system focused on New York City (NYC) and its urban and suburban surroundings. The system is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model and NCAR's Real-Time Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation (RTFDDA) System. The aim of the project is to demonstrate that NASA datasets, when used in numerical models, can improve forecasts that are supplied to decision support systems (DSSs) used by emergency managers when responding to airborne threats in urban environments.

The presenter will provide an overview of the project and present results in the forms of 1) verification statistics and 2) case studies of sea breezes and other circulations characteristic of the complex coastal setting of NYC and Long Island. Properly forecasting such circulations is critical if weather-based DSSs are to be useful to emergency responders and anyone else interested in the challenges of predicting transport and dispersion in urban settings.