NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTION

START:
January 17, 2017
ID:
METR 4920/5920

INSTRUCTORS:

Leslie, Lance
​Professor Emeritus

Address

National Weather Center, 120 David L Boren Blvd, Room 5600, Norman, OK 73072   View map

Categories

Spring 2017
  1. Introduction and Course Overview
  • Historical perspective
  • What are numerical weather analysis (NWA) and numerical weather prediction (NWP)?
  • Why are they important?
  • How “good” are they at present? What are the key performance issues?

 

  1. Governing Equations for NWP
  • Derivation and classification
  • Barotropic vorticity equation
  • Shallow water equations
  • Normal and forced modes

 

  1. Numerical Weather Analysis I
  • Definitions and concepts

 

  1. Numerical Weather Analysis II
  • Optimal interpolation
  • Data assimilation: existing and emerging techniques
  1. NWP Methods I: Theory
  • Concepts: consistency, convergence and stability

Temporal and spatial differencing

  • Boundary conditions and filters
  • Conserving schemes

 

  1. NWP Methods II: Assessment of Specific Models
  • Numeric and physics of GFS, WRF, UKMO, ECMWF and other models
  • (including climate models). How do these models compare?

 

  1. Atmospheric Predictability
  • Basic concepts and definitions
  • Chaos theory and error growth
  • Predictability of tropics vs extra-tropics
  • Ensemble forecasting methods

 

  1. The Future of NWA and NWP
  • What might we expect over the coming decades