Characterization of Mesoscale Predictability

Abstract

One of the major efforts in the atmospheric sciences has been to develop and implement high-resolution forecast models and to improve their parameterization of unresolved physical processes (boundary-layer transport, cloud microphysics ). For the last three decades, the relatively pessimistic predictions of Lorenz (1969) about the predictability of small-scale (i.e., mesoscale) atmospheric features have been largely ignored as routine weather forecasts were conducted at increasingly fine scale. Recent research suggests there are nevertheless, significant limitations to the predictability of mesoscale atmospheric circulations. Our goal is to develop an understanding of the predictability of such circulations in forecasts generated by state-of-the-art high-resolution mesoscale models.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2013
Accession Number
ADA598027

Entities

People

  • Dale R. Durran

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Atmospheric Motion
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Convection
  • Dynamics
  • Energy
  • Errors
  • High Resolution
  • Kinetic Energy
  • Layers
  • Lead Time
  • Meteorological Phenomena
  • Meteorology
  • New England
  • Rhode Island
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers