The Multi-Year Reanalysis of Remotely Sensed Storms (MYRORSS): Data Processing and Severe Weather Projects

A joint effort by CIMMS, NSSL, CICS, and NCEI, to reprocess all WSR-88D reflectivity and velocity data through the Multi-Radar, Multi-Sensor (MRMS) system has been ongoing since 2012. To date, the years 2000 through 2011 have been completed. The Multi-Year Reanalysis of Remotely Sensed Storms (MYRORSS) provides three dimensional merged radar reflectivity data over the entire contiguous United States on a 0.01 degree by 0.01 degree latitude-longitude grid with variable vertical spacing to 20 km. Details on the data processing and data quality control will be presented. There are currently two major applications of the data: severe weather and hydrometeorology. This presentation outlines data and projects related to severe weather research. There are several current severe weather projects in progress using MYRORSS data. The first is using the spatial grids to create climatologies of severe weather hazards. These radar-based climatologies could fill in gaps left from climatologies based upon storm reports. Another project uses a K-means based clustering algorithm to identify storms and relate their characteristics to severe wind reports. The storm identification process has other applications as well, such as producing climatologies of storm type and duration of convective events. Applications of the grids and derived data towards new evaluations of severe weather warnings and future severe weather warning techniques will also be discussed. All of the results and information will be used within ongoing research-to-operations projects such as the implementation of MRMS in NWS operations and the Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) project.