Tracking of mesoscale weather systems in a high-resolution convection-permitting simulation of current climate

Tracking of synoptic-scale weather systems like cyclones has been performed for years, and provides information about the motion, intensity, and longevity of large-scale systems produced by numerical weather prediction models. With numerical models being run with convection-permitting resolutions, tracking of smaller scale model-simulated features such as thunderstorms has the potential to give insight into the question of whether these high-resolution models reproduce the observed strength and duration of mesoscale systems. A novel approach to tracking mesoscale features is developed using the Baddeley image metric. This method is applied to dynamically downscaled Weather Research and Forecasting integrations for April through June between 1991 and 2000 and a climatology of convective-storm tracks is compiled. Ultimately, the tracks of mesoscale features will be compared to tracks determined from observational analyses.