Convective-scale Warn-on-Forecast: Tension Between Seamless Prediction and Intrinsic Predictability (Invited Presentation)

Warn-on-Forecast is a research project led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to extend severe weather warning lead times by incorporating forecasts from a convection-allowing ensemble modeling system into the warning decision process. Initial results with convection-allowing ensembles that assimilate radar and satellite observations have shown that while reasonable thunderstorm analyses are produced, obtaining accurate very short-range thunderstorm forecasts out to an hour is more challenging. Results also suggest an environmental influence on the practical predictability, wherein some events evolve very rapidly and have a shorter limit of prediction and others evolve more slowly and have a longer limit of prediction. Understanding and communicating these differing scenarios will be important to the success of future warning operations. These results will be explored within the context of earlier studies on thunderstorm predictability.