Verification of national weather service spot forecasts using surface observations

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Title Verification of national weather service spot forecasts using surface observations
Publication Type thesis
School or College College of Mines & Earth Sciences
Department Atmospheric Sciences
Author Lammers, Matthew Robert
Date 2014-08
Description Software has been developed to evaluate National Weather Service spot forecasts issued to support prescribed burns and early-stage wildfires. Fire management officials request spot forecasts from National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices to provide detailed guidance as to atmospheric conditions in the vicinity of planned prescribed burns as well as wildfires that do not have incident meteorologists on site. This open source software with online display capabilities is used to examine an extensive set of spot forecasts of maximum temperature, minimum relative humidity, and maximum wind speed from April 2009 through November 2013 nationwide. The forecast values are compared to the closest available surface observations at stations installed primarily for fire weather and aviation applications. The accuracy of the spot forecasts is compared to those available from the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD). Spot forecasts for selected prescribed burns and wildfires are used to illustrate issues associated with the verification procedures. Cumulative statistics for National Weather Service County Warning Areas and for the nation are presented. Basic error and accuracy metrics for all available spot forecasts and the entire nation indicate that the skill of the spot forecasts is higher than that available from the NDFD, with the greatest improvement for maximum temperature and the least improvement for maximum wind speed.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Fire weather; Forecast verification; Weather forecasting; Wildfire
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name Master of Science
Language eng
Rights Management Copyright © Matthew Robert Lammers 2014
Format application/pdf
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 2,773,771 bytes
Identifier etd3/id/3093
ARK ark:/87278/s6254sd8
Setname ir_etd
ID 196661
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6254sd8
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