The Developmental Testbed Center Objective Evaluation Performed During the 2010 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiment

The collaboration between the Hazardous Weather Testbed and Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate the utility of objective evaluation in the forecast environment. In addition to using deterministic and ensemble-based convection-allowing model forecasts as guidance for experimental probabilistic severe convective weather forecasts, the 2010 Spring Experiment included additional components focused on convective hazards for QPF/extreme precipitation events and aviation-related thunderstorm impacts.

With the addition of probabilistic verification capabilities in the DTC's Model Evaluation Tool (MET), both probabilistic products and deterministic forecasts were evaluated this year. DTC evaluated output from the CAPS Storm Scale Ensemble Forecast (SSEF), the NOAA/ESRL/GSD High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), and the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model and the Short Range Ensemble Forecast System (SREF), both produced by NOAA/NCEP/EMC. The evaluation focus was on products derived from the simulated reflectivity and quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) fields.

It is anticipated that both the subjective and near-realtime objective evaluations performed for the SE2010 will eventually lead to greater use of latest convection-allowing model forecasts by the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center, NOAA/NWS Hydrometeorological Predication Center (HPC) and NOAA/NWS Aviation Weather Center (AWC). This talk will describe the DTC objective evaluation performed for Spring Experiment component during the 2010 Spring Experiment, highlight key results, and describe recent work performed retrospectively after the experiment.