Comparisons between Observed and WRF Simulated Precipitation Organization in the Southeast US

This project uses the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to investigate the organization of precipitation during a summertime and a wintertime midlatitude cyclone passage in the Southeast United States.

This project is an extension of an ongoing study of observed precipitation organization for the Southeast US using the National Mosaic and Multi-sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (NMQ) radar data from 2009-2013. Examples of precipitation organization that occur within various synoptic regimes include short duration and spatially heterogeneous convective cells, large mesoscale convective systems, and winter precipitation.

Analogous to the observations, WRF precipitation for each case study will be classified as mesoscale convective system, isolated, or winter precipitation. Our goal is to examine how well the WRF simulates the precipitation organization compared to the observations and to examine the synoptic scale conditions that favor different types of precipitation organization. In the long-term we will examine the skill of WRF at capturing precipitation organization in a variety of synoptic scale regimes and under different climate scenarios.