Evaluating NARCCAP model performance for frequencies of severe-storm environments

Gilleland, Eric; Bukovsky, Melissa; Williams, Christopher L.; McGinnis, Seth; Ammann, Caspar M.; Brown, Barbara G.; Mearns, Linda O.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-2-137-2016

Articles | Volume 2, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-2-137-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-2-137-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 2, issue 2

04 Nov 2016

| 04 Nov 2016

Evaluating NARCCAP model performance for frequencies of severe-storm environments

Eric Gilleland, Melissa Bukovsky, Christopher L. Williams, Seth McGinnis, Caspar M. Ammann, Barbara G. Brown, and Linda O. Mearns

Data sets

North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) EMC http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/rreanl/

The North American Regional Climate change Assessment Program dataset L. Mearns, S. McGinnis, R. Arritt, S. Biner, P. Duffy, W. Gutowski, I. Held, R. Jones, R. Leung, A. Nunes, M. Snyder, D. Caya, J. Correia, D. Flory, D. Herzmann, R. Laprise, W. Moufouma-Okia, G. Takle, H. Teng, J. Thompson, S. Tucker, B. Wyman, A. Anitha, L. Buja, C. Macintosh, L. McDaniel, T. O'Brien, Y. Qian, L. Sloan, G. Strand, and Zoellick, C. https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RN35ST

Short summary

Several climate models are evaluated under current climate conditions to determine how well they are able to capture frequencies of severe-storm environments (conditions conducive for the formation of hail storms, tornadoes, etc.). They are found to underpredict the spatial extent of high-frequency areas (such as tornado alley), as well as underpredict the frequencies in the areas.