Oct. 3: Atmospheric Sciences seminar focuses on experimental warn-on-forecast system

Patrick Skinner, Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, University of Oklahoma and NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory, will present a seminar titled “Post-Processing, Visualization, and Verification of an Experimental Warn-on-Forecast System” on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 3 p.m. in Odegard Hall, Room 111.

Faculty and students are encouraged to attend.

Abstract

The Warn-on-Forecast project aims to provide probabilistic guidance for hazards within individual convective storms (e.g. tornadoes, large hail, damaging winds, and flash flooding). Working toward this goal, a prototype real-time Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) has been run each spring since 2016.  The system issues short term (0–6 h), 18-member ensemble forecasts twice per hour.  The rapid issuance and short duration of these forecasts present a unique set of challenges for creating and disseminating guidance products that can be used in real time by operational meteorologists.  Furthermore, the greater spatial and temporal specificity provided by WoFS forecasts requires application of novel verification techniques to assess the quality of system performance.

This talk will present an overview of WoFS post-processing, visualization, and verification methodologies that are designed to address these challenges.  Development of probabilistic forecast products for different convective hazards will be discussed and case studies where products provided potentially valuable, or potentially misleading, guidance to end users will be presented.  Additionally, the accuracy of WoFS thunderstorm and mesocyclone forecasts across 64 cases from 2017 and 2018 is assessed using object-based verification against Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor gridded reflectivity and rotation track observations.

Patrick Skinner

Pat grew up in Parker, Colo,, about 20 miles south of Denver, and received his undergraduate degree in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado in 2003. He received a Master’s degree in Atmospheric Science in 2010 and a Ph.D. in Wind Science and Engineering in 2014 from Texas Tech University.  Dr. Chris Weiss served as his advisor for both graduate degrees and his PhD research used observations and ensemble Kalman Filter retrievals to examine the evolution and forcing mechanisms of internal rear-flank downdraft momentum surges in a supercell observed during VORTEX2.

Skinner joined the National Severe Storms Laboratory as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in 2013 and the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies as a Research Scientist in 2016.  In 2019 he began serving as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology and as the team lead for the Testbeds, Assessment, and Post-Processing team at NSSL.  His work at NSSL and CIMMS has focused on development and application of verification techniques for the Warn-on-Forecast project.