An Object-based Assessment of the Impacts of Radar Data Assimilation in the Community Leveraged Unified Ensemble

The Community Leveraged Unified Ensemble (CLUE) consists of sixty-five members designed to conduct eight specific experiments that identify best practices for the short-term (0 – 36 hr) prediction of convective storms. This study utilizes object-based verification techniques to address experiments associated with the assimilation of radar data.

The Method for Object-Based Diagnostic Evaluation (MODE) Time Domain software has been utilized to create a dataset of forecast objects in CLUE members with and without radar data assimilation, as well as in a corresponding verification dataset developed from Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor data. This object-based verification framework will allow the skill of the ensemble members with and without radar assimilation to be assessed as well as provide extensive diagnostic measures of predicted thunderstorms, allowing systematic differences between the different forecasts to be identified.