Campus Units
Geological and Atmospheric Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
12-13-2020
Journal or Book Title
Water
Volume
12
Issue
12
First Page
3505
DOI
10.3390/w12123505
Abstract
To account for spatial displacement errors common in quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPFs), a method using systematic shifting of QPF fields was tested to create ensemble streamflow forecasts. While previous studies addressed spatial displacement using neighborhood approaches, shifting of QPF accounts for those errors while maintaining the structure of predicted systems, a feature important in hydrologic forecasts. QPFs from the nine-member High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Ensemble were analyzed for 46 forecasts from 6 cases covering 17 basins within the National Weather Service North Central River Forecast Center forecasting region. Shifts of 55.5 and 111 km were made in the four cardinal and intermediate directions, increasing the ensemble size to 81 members. These members were input into a distributed hydrologic model to create an ensemble streamflow prediction. Overall, the ensemble using the shifted QPFs had an improved frequency of non-exceedance and probability of detection, and thus better predicted flood occurrence. However, false alarm ratio did not improve, likely because shifting multiple QPF ensembles increases the potential to place heavy precipitation in a basin where none actually occurred. A weighting scheme based on a climatology of displacements was tested, improving overall performance slightly compared to the approach using non-weighted members.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Owner
The Author(s)
Copyright Date
2020
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Carlberg, Bradley; Franz, Kristie J.; and Gallus, William A. Jr., "A Method to Account for QPF Spatial Displacement Errors in Short-Term Ensemble Streamflow Forecasting" (2020). Geological and Atmospheric Sciences Publications. 332.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ge_at_pubs/332
Comments
This article is published as Carlberg, Bradley, Kristie Franz, and William Gallus. "A Method to Account for QPF Spatial Displacement Errors in Short-Term Ensemble Streamflow Forecasting." Water 12, no. 12 (2020): 3505. DOI: 10.3390/w12123505. Posted with permission.