92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Comparison of Estimated and Observed Storm Motions to Environmental Parameters
Eric R. Beamesderfer, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA; and K. L. Ortega, T. M. Smith, and J. L. Cintineo

This study explores current storm motion techniques and analyzes their accuracy with respect to different environmental parameters. Current motion estimates are compared to observed motions and different environmental parameters. The parameters investigated are the heights of the lifted condensation level (LCL) and the level of free convection (LFC), the mean relative humidity from the surface to 0°C and the storm relative helicity (SRH) from 0-3 km. Deviate estimates were seen by each storm motion estimator for the different environmental parameters. Also, it was evident that some storm motion estimators were superior to others. However, overall the observed motions in this study were dissimilar to the environmental.

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