The 11th Conference on Applied Climatology

5.3
ECPC' S GLOBAL TO REGIONAL FIREWEATHER FORECAST SYSTEM

John O. Roads, La Jolla, CA; and S. C. Chen, J. Ritchie, F. Fujioka, H. Juang, and M. Kanamitsu

The Scripps Experimental Climate Prediction Center’s (ECPC’s) global to regional modeling system is being used to make weekly to seasonal fire weather forecasts. The modeling system uses NCEP’s regional spectral model (RSM), nested within NCEP’s GSM (global spectral model). The nesting is done by first integrating the GSM which thus provides initial and low spatial resolution model parameters as well as lateral boundary conditions for the RSM. The RSM then predicts regional variations influenced more by the higher resolution orography and other land distributions within the limited but high resolution regional domain. Both models use the same 28 terrain following sigma layers, the same comprehensive set of physical parameterization modular packages, and the same diagnostic packages. These diagnostic packages provide land surface parameters (e.g. soil wetness, soil temperature, etc.), sensible and latent heat fluxes, radiation fluxes, cloudiness, various three dimensional heating and moisture distributions, max/min temperatures, etc. Global to regional weekly to seasonal forecasts are currently displayed on our Experimental Climate Prediction Center web site for several regions (Global, U.S., California, U.S. Southwest, Hawaii). The entire globe is shown at 100 km resolution; the entire U.S., including Alaska is shown at 50 km resolution; California and the U.S. Southwest are shown at 25 km resolution; Hawaii is shown at 10 km resolution. This global to regional modeling system can be easily moved anywhere else in the world. An experimental mesoscale model is now under development and experimental emergency forecasts at 2 km resolution will also soon be available for Hawaii and California. Evaluations of the skill of these forecasts of fire weather will be provided at the meeting

The 11th Conference on Applied Climatology