NOAA/CMA High Resolution Real Time Analysis for Severe Weather Warnings

China Meteorological Administration (CMA) Public Meteorological Service Center has been collaborating with NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) for developing nowcasting and very short-range forecasting capability. It is designed to provide severe weather warnings and emergency information to the general public for reducing the damage to life and economy. CMA has relatively dense surface observation network irregularly distributed from the east to the west, about 30,000 temperature measurements and over 40,000 rain gauge data each hour. High spatial and temporal analysis of these data could provide much needed nowcasting and short-range forecasting information to the general public. NOAA ESRL has developed a multiscale analysis system (Space and Time Multiscale Analysis System, STMAS or also called variational LAPS, vLAPS). This analysis system uses a multigrid technique and effectively and accurately combines the different scale information contained in these observations to generate gridded analysis in hourly or sub-hourly at 3km nation wide and 1km for 12 regional analyses over China. The analysis is very useful for generating nowcasting and very short-range forecasting. Some results will be presented in this talk.