An environmental climatology of the CAPS Storm-Scale Ensemble Forecast system during the 2010 HWT Spring Experiment

Since 2007, the University of Oklahoma (OU) Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) has provided the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiment with data from their 4-km grid length storm scale ensemble forecast (SSEF) system. The output from the 26-member ensemble (19 WRF-ARW, 5 WRF-NMM, 2 WRF-ARPS members) this year included numerous environmental and convective storm parameters. In an effort to better understand the temporal and domain-wide behavior of the SSEF, data from the ~6 week period encompassing the Spring Experiment are examined to create an ensemble climatology for selected meteorological parameters related to convective development, including 2-m temperature, 2-m dew point, surface based CAPE, and 0-6 km AGL bulk shear. Results from the assembled forecast hour average and standard deviation grids will be illustrated through 2D field analyses (e.g., domain-wide geographic displays at different forecast hours and/or Hovmöller diagrams) and will help to augment the standard tabular and graphical results from the forecast climatology. Finally, some skill related metrics will also be obtained through comparisons against hourly objective mesoscale analyses available at the Storm Prediction Center.