Sea breeze thunderstorms in the eastern Iberian Peninsula. Neighborhood verification of HIRLAM and HARMONIE precipitation forecasts

In this study we investigated sea breeze thunderstorms with intense convective activity (i.e., heavy rainfall, hail and gusty winds) that occurred over the eastern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and were missed by the operational HIRLAM model. We used two grid-spacing setups (5.0. km and 2.5. km) of the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Azorín-Molina, César, Tijm, Sander, Ebert, Ralf-Uwe, Elizabeth E., Vicente Serrano, Sergio M., Estrela, María J.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:digitalcsic_::3cffde34cb89fb608e5af1af24ea1080
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/92882
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Sea breeze thunderstorm
Neighborhood verification
HARMONIE
HIRLAM
Operational forecasting
Iberian Peninsula
Descripción
Sumario:In this study we investigated sea breeze thunderstorms with intense convective activity (i.e., heavy rainfall, hail and gusty winds) that occurred over the eastern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and were missed by the operational HIRLAM model. We used two grid-spacing setups (5.0. km and 2.5. km) of the hydrostatic HIRLAM model, and the non-hydrostatic spectral HARMONIE suite (2.5. km), to simulate isolated convection associated with sea breezes. The overall aim is to estimate the ability of these three experimental setups, in particular the HARMONIE model as the forthcoming operational numerical weather prediction in most European Weather Services, to correctly simulate convective precipitation associated with sea breezes. We evaluated high-resolution gridded precipitation forecasts from HIRLAM and HARMONIE suites for 15 sea breeze thunderstorms against high-density gridded raingauge measurements applying different neighborhood verification techniques. The results indicate that higher horizontal resolutions of HIRLAM and HARMONIE models succeeded in predicting the occurrence of these missed sea breeze thunderstorms, the HARMONIE suite being the most capable of providing good estimates of accumulated precipitation in convective events in terms of space and time. Advances in quantitative precipitation forecasting of locally driven convection could have practical applications for nowcasting dangerous sea breeze convective phenomena. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.