The Sea Port of Debarkation (SPOD) Vulnerability and Ship Protection in the Littoral Region Weather Model Experiment will be conducted this summer on the lower Chesapeake Bay. The primary goal of the experiment is to measure the improvement in the prediction of weakly forced mesoscale circulations in a littoral region based on an increased spatio-temporal resolution of surface characteristics. Higher resolution terrain and land use databases, in-situ measurements and remote sensing will obtain the improvement in surface characterization.

In situ measurements will come from a variety of sources including a network of 15 automated weather stations installed and maintained by Marak Services, Inc. These stations, in conjunction with the existing network of 5 MARAK Services sites within or near the experiment domain yields a spatially thorough suite of sites when used in tandem with NOAA C-MAN, PORTS and NWS sites. The unique aspect of the 20-site mesonet as it provides an independent source for model verification. In addition, mesonet data may improve model accuracy through assimilation into the input data stream. Examples will be given of weakly forced events using data from the mesonet. In addition, preliminary model results will be examined to determine various models’ ability to capture to these events. Finally, data from the mesonet will be ingested into the input data stream to determine whether forecast accuracy improves.