Sensitivity to Data in High Resolution Data Assimilation for the Dallas Urban Testbed

As part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) developed a 1-km resolution real-time nowcasting and numerical weather prediction (NWP) system and a 400-m real-time analysis system for a domain covering central and southwest Oklahoma. In 2012 an urban testbed was established in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of North Texas corresponding with the plan to move the CASA X-band radars from Oklahoma to this area. The area is covered by several NEXRAD radars, two TDWR radars, multiple ASOS and AWOS sites, surface observations acquired by the private sector, and the GOES-13 geostationary satellite.

This work reports on our plans and preliminary testing of the sensitivity of high resolution analyses and cycled data assimilation to various data sources. Although the CASA radars are not yet operational in Dallas, in this work we explore the sensitivity to the addition of the TDWR radars and the high resolution surface data to the NEXRAD network and standard suite of Federal surface observation data for two severe weather cases from the spring 2012 convective season.