Quality Assessment of the National Ceiling and Visibility Analysis Product

The quality of the National Ceiling and Visibility (NCV) analysis product is evaluated using cross-validation methods and the results of the evaluation are detailed in this paper. Similar evaluations of the operational ceiling and visibility product are also included for purposes of comparison. Results indicate that the NCV product shows skill in determining flight categories based on ceiling and visibility thresholds. Further, the NCV visibility field matches well with the visibility observations. The NCV ceiling matches less well with the ceiling observations and is somewhat biased. Further improvements to the NCV analysis product should probably include some adjustment of the ceiling values to reduce the bias.