Sunday, 10 August 2003: 4:30 PM
A Model to Generate Stochastic Nowcasts of Rainfall
Poster PDF
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The accuracy of nowcasts based on advecting the observed rain field is
limited by the extent to which the observed field develops during the
forecast period. This temporal development can be either decay in existing
rain bands or the development of new rain bands in areas that are currently
not raining. A convenient way of representing this uncertainty in the
forecast is to express the forecast as a probability distribution rather
than as an expectation. This paper presents a method to generate a series
of stochastic forecasts that are conditioned on the current rain field. The
apparent motion of the field is first estimated as a field of advection
vectors, thereafter the field is disaggregated into a hierarchy of fields,
where each level in the cascade represents features in the rain field over a
limited range of scales. The rate of change of the field at each level is
estimated and used to introduce correlated noise at each level which
increases in proportion with lead time, leading to pure stochastic noise
after the largest scales in the field have evolved through their lifetime.
The forecast probability distribution is estimated by generating 100
forecast sequences, each starting with the same observed rain field and for
10 to 120 minute lead times.
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