Verification Strategy
(Land and Hydrology)
Presented By: Brian Cosgrove (NWS/NWC) and Michael Ek
(NWS/NCEP/EMC)
Contributors: Mark Fresch (NWS/NWC)
1
Operational System Attribute(s)
System Name
Acronym
Areal
Coverage
Horz Res
Time
Scales
Fcst
Length
(hr)
NWC Hydro Strategy: Develop an
operational National Water Center
Water Resource Evaluation Service to
evaluate inputs/outputs/forcing in an
automated, real-time and
retrospective fashion
WRES
CONUS+
250m grid
1km grid
Points
Small catchments (~13km)
SubHourly to
Seasonal
N/A
EMC Land Strategy:
Retrospective/NLDAS evaluation of
energy and water balance fluxes and
states. Real-time coupled NWP
evaluations of near-surface
meteorology, precipitation and
RAOBS.
NLDAS/GLDAS
/Coupled
Conus to
Global
1km to 13km
Hourly to
Seasonal
N/A
System
System Attributes
Attributes
WRES
WRES will continually ingest and process real-time forecasts and observations.
Verification can be configured to run in a manually initiated or fully automated
fashion with both real-time and retrospective components.
NLDAS/GLDAS/
Coupled
System will perform retrospective and real-time evaluations using in situ and
satellite-based observations.
2
Why System(s) are Operational
 Primary stakeholders and requirement drivers
•
•
•
Requirement: timely, objective, and spatially complete real-time and retrospective
verification of energy/water budget fluxes, boundary conditions for coupled
models, and specialized hydrologic vars (streamflow, stage, inundation depth)
Requirements Drivers:
• Effective use of model output requires knowledge of performance
• Model improvement (diagnosing sources of errors, guiding development investments)
Stakeholders:
• NWS Regions and forecasters, NCEP Centers, NWC
• FEMA and local emergency managers
• Army Corps of Engineers, River Basin Commissions and local water supply agencies
 What products are the systems contributing to?
•
Output from the systems will contribute to effective use of output in decision
support , the model improvement process, and the establishment of obs networks
 What product aspects are you trying to improve with your development
plans?
•
Most current land surface/hydrologic verification systems are non-operational,
non-automated and limited in scope and application (near-sfc met is exception)
 Top 3 System Performance Strengths
• 1) Broad range of verification data sets, 2) Comprehensive set of verification
techniques, 3) Automated, routine real-time operations
 Top 3 System Performance Challenges
• 1) Data scarcity, 2) Data timeliness, 3) Disparity in data formats
3
System Evolution
Over the Next 5 Years
 Major forcing factors
•
Drive towards fully coupled earth system modeling will only succeed if a robust
and versatile real-time and retrospective verification system is created to address
inputs and outputs in enough detail not only to assess performance, but to
diagnose source of performance issues
 Science and development priorities
•
•
•
Expansion of data types used for verification
Inclusion of broad range of analysis techniques suitable for needs of diverse user
base (NWC, EMC, WPC, NOS)
Transition of system into real-time operations
 What are your top challenges to evolving the system(s) to meet stakeholder
requirements?
• Timely availability of verification data
• Sub-optimal density of verification data
• Interoperability of data formats
 Potential opportunities for simplification going forward
• Given the partial overlap in requirements, the opportunity exists to coalesce around
verification tools to verify precipitation (WPC), and land surface/hydrologic
variables (NWC, EMC, NOS). While mission requirements differ and will necessitate
some customizations, efficiencies may be gained by collaborative design,
development, and data acquisition between NCEP and the NWC.
4
Top 3 Things You Need
From the UMAC
1. Continuation of efforts to eliminate stovepipes
across NWS
2. Neutral input into vision of cross-NOAA and
interagency modeling strategy
3. Support for links to projects and programs in the
broader national and international land surface
hydrology community
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