Experimental Model Evaluations for Tropical Cyclone Forecasting

The Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) provides the basis for NOAA and other agencies to coordinate hurricane research needed to significantly improve numerical guidance for hurricane forecasts. The Tropical Cyclone Modeling Team (TCMT), located in the Joint Numerical Testbed Program (JNTP) of NCAR's Research Applications Laboratory (RAL), contributes to this effort by undertaking objective verification of extensive retrospective forecast data sets provided by HFIP model development groups. These evaluations focus on whether the experimental models are able to add value to the current operational guidance. Annual evaluation exercises are directed at selecting experimental models and/or techniques that will be made available to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in near-real-time during the upcoming hurricane season. More recent evaluations have been directed at providing the HFIP program office and NHC with objective verification of extensive data sets designed to carefully assess the impact of standard aircraft reconnaissance data and tail Doppler radar data on the tropical cyclone forecast skill of current model systems. This presentation will describe the methods used by the TCMT for these evaluations and summarize the high lights of the results of these evaluations.