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

Wednesday, 25 January 2012: 4:15 PM
Automated Tracking and Analysis of Convective Weather Systems Using the Binary Baddeley Image Metric
Room 242 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Benjamin R. J. Schwedler, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN; and M. E. Baldwin

A new approach to tracking small-scale convective weather systems has been developed using the Baddeley computer image metric as the measure of similarity. Instead of explicitly focusing on the attributes of automatically identified storm cells, as is the case with many tracking methods, the Baddeley metric implicitly examines characteristics such as intensity, size, shape, and location by examining the entire field. Additionally, this tracking system allows for the splitting and merging of convective weather systems throughout the lifetime of the system, producing tracks that are both complex and realistic. This method is applied to ten years of convective-permitting numerical simulations between the months of April through June and the ability of these simulations to produce convective systems similar to those found in observations is analyzed.

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