Hourly-updated NWP forecasts are now running experimentally over North America (including Alaska) in the Rapid Refresh (RR) model/assimilation system, assimilating all available observations on an hourly basis using a 13km version of the WRF model. NOAA/ERSL/GSD is developing the RR, which will be transferred to NCEP to replace the current Rapid Update Cycle (covering a smaller domain not including Alaska) in 2010. A companion presentation (Benjamin) provides an overview of the RR model and assimilation system.
This talk will focus on case study analyses of RR performance over Alaska and the lower 48 states. Quantitative verification will be presented illustrate RR performance for standard quantities (rawinsonde, surface and precipitation verification). In addition verification with respect to aircraft data (including PenAir TAMDAR aircraft) will be presented. This quantitative verification will be augmented by more detailed analyses of specific cases to illustrate successes and remaining challenges for the RR development and testing. Particular emphasis will be placed on RR specific analysis modifications to utilize cloud and surface observations to provide a more realistic initialization.