Showing papers by "Eugenia Kalnay published in 1988"

Time Schemes for Strongly Nonlinear Damping Equations

Abstract: In atmospheric models that include vertical diffusion and surface fluxes of heat and moisture it is common to observe large amplitude “fibrillations” associated with these noniinear damping terms. In this paper this phenomenon is studied through the analysis of a simple nonlinear damping equation, ∂X/∂t = −(KXP)X + S. It is concluded that the behavior of several time schemes for the strongly nonlinear damping equations currently used can be quite pathological, with either large amplitude oscillations, or even nonoscillatory but incorrect solutions. Also presented are new simple schemes, which are easy to implement and have a much wider range of stability. These schemes are applied in the new National Meteorological Center (NMC) spectral model.

Medium Range Lagged Average Forecasts

Abstract: In this work, the application of the lagged average forecasting (LAF) technique to operational forecasts of the ECMWF is reported. The ECMWF data consist of two 100-day samples of 10-day forecasts of 500-mb geopotential height for winter 1980/81 and summer 1981. the LAF ensemble includes the latest operational forecast, and also forecast for the same verification time started one or more days earlier than the latest one. The focus is on the following two issues: (1) does ensemble averaging improve forecast skill and (2) is the dispersion of the ensemble useful in predicting forecast skill. The LAF technique was used to produce 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9 day forecasts of the 500-mb height field. The results show that the statistically filtered LAF is a marked improvment upon the operational forecast after 5 days. It is found that on a global scale, forecast skill is weakly correlated with the dispersion of the ensemble, as measured by the rms difference between the operational forecast and the statistically filtered LAF.