Burton, RR, Blyth, AM orcid.org/0000-0001-7115-2587, Cui, Z orcid.org/0000-0002-0769-8937 et al. (6 more authors) (2022) Satellite-Based Nowcasting of West African Mesoscale Storms Has Skill at up to 4-h Lead Time. Weather and Forecasting, 37 (4). pp. 445-455. ISSN 0882-8156
Abstract
The ability to predict heavy rain and floods in Africa is urgently needed to reduce the socioeconomic costs of these events and increase resilience as climate changes. Numerical weather prediction in this region is challenging, and attention is being drawn to observationally based methods of providing short-term nowcasts (up to ∼6-h lead time). In this paper a freely available nowcasting package, pySTEPS, is used to assess the potential to provide nowcasts of satellite-derived convective rain rate for West Africa. By analyzing a large number of nowcasts, we demonstrate that a simple approach of “optical flow” can have useful skill at 2-h lead time on a 10-km scale and 4-h lead time at larger scales (200 km). A diurnal variation in nowcast skill is observed, with the worst-performing nowcasts being those that are initialized at 1500 UTC. Comparison with existing nowcasts is presented. Such nowcasts, if implemented operationally, would be expected to have significant benefits.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 American Meteorological Society (AMS). See https://www.ametsoc.org/PUBSCopyrightPolicy for further information. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Cloud tracking; Satellite observations; Mesoscale systems; Africa; Nowcasting |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > National Centre for Atmos Science (NCAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/P021077/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Not Known |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Jan 2022 08:54 |
Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2023 15:16 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Meteorological Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1175/WAF-D-21-0051.1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:182367 |