Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport[International Civil Aviation Organization(ICAO)code ZLLL]is located in a wind shear prone area in China,where most low-level wind shear events occur in dry weather conditions.We analyzed temporal distribution and synoptic circulation background for 18 dry wind shear events reported by pilots at ZLLL by using the NCEP final(FNL)operational global analysis data,and then proposed a lidar-based regional divergence algorithm(RDA)to determine wind shear intensity and location.Low-level wind shear at ZLLL usually occurs in the afternoon and evening in dry conditions.Most wind shear events occur in an unstable atmosphere over ZLLL,with changes in wind speed or direction generally found at 700 hPa and 10-m height.Based on synoptic circulations at 700 hPa,wind shear events could be classified as strong northerly,convergence,southerly,and weak wind types.The proposed RDA successfully identified low-level wind shear except one southerly case,achieving94%alerting rate compared with 82%for the operational system at ZLLL and 88%for the ramp detection algorithm(widely used in some operational alert systems)based on the same dataset.The RDA-unidentified southerly case occurred in a near neutral atmosphere,and wind speed change could not be captured by the Doppler lidar.
An observation localization scheme is introduced into an ensemble-based three-dimensional variational (3DVar) assimilation method based on the singular value decomposition technique (SVD-En3DVar) to improve assimilation skill. A point-by-point analysis technique is adopted in which the weight of each observation decreases with increasing distance between the analysis point and the observation point. A set of numerical experiments, in which simulated Doppler radar data are assimilated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, is designed to test the scheme. The results are compared with those obtained using the original global and local patch schemes in SVD-En3DVar, neither of which includes this type of observation localization. The observation localization scheme not only eliminates spurious analysis increments in areas of missing data, but also avoids the discontinuous analysis fields that arise from the local patch scheme. The new scheme provides better analysis fields and a more reasonable short-range rainfall forecast than the original schemes. Additional forecast experiments that assimilate real data from 10 radars indicate that the short-term precipitation forecast skill can be improved by assimilating radar data and the observation localization scheme provides a better forecast than the other two schemes.
In model-based climate sensitivity studies,model errors may grow during continuous long-term integrations in both the "reference" and "perturbed" states and hence the climate sensitivity(defined as the difference between the two states).To reduce the errors,we propose a piecewise modeling approach that splits the continuous long-term simulation into subintervals of sequential short-term simulations,and updates the modeled states through re-initialization at the end of each subinterval.In the re-initialization processes,this approach updates the reference state with analysis data and updates the perturbed states with the sum of analysis data and the difference between the perturbed and the reference states,thereby improving the credibility of the modeled climate sensitivity.We conducted a series of experiments with a shallow-water model to evaluate the advantages of the piecewise approach over the conventional continuous modeling approach.We then investigated the impacts of analysis data error and subinterval length used in the piecewise approach on the simulations of the reference and perturbed states as well as the resulting climate sensitivity.The experiments show that the piecewise approach reduces the errors produced by the conventional continuous modeling approach,more effectively when the analysis data error becomes smaller and the subinterval length is shorter.In addition,we employed a nudging assimilation technique to solve possible spin-up problems caused by re-initializations by using analysis data that contain inconsistent errors between mass and velocity.The nudging technique can effectively diminish the spin-up problem,resulting in a higher modeling skill.
The relationship between the radar reflectivity factor(Z) and the rainfall rate(R) is recalculated based on radar observations from 10 Doppler radars and hourly rainfall measurements at 6529 automatic weather stations over the Yangtze–Huaihe River basin. The data were collected by the National 973 Project from June to July 2013 for severe convective weather events. The Z–R relationship is combined with an empirical qr–R relationship to obtain a new Z–qr relationship, which is then used to correct the observational operator for radar reflectivity in the three-dimensional variational(3 DVar) data assimilation system of the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF) model to improve the analysis and prediction of severe convective weather over the Yangtze–Huaihe River basin. The performance of the corrected reflectivity operator used in the WRF 3 DVar data assimilation system is tested with a heavy rain event that occurred over Jiangsu and Anhui provinces and the surrounding regions on 23 June 2013. It is noted that the observations for this event are not included in the calculation of the Z–R relationship. Three experiments are conducted with the WRF model and its 3 DVar system, including a control run without the assimilation of reflectivity data and two assimilation experiments with the original and corrected reflectivity operators. The experimental results show that the assimilation of radar reflectivity data has a positive impact on the rainfall forecast within a few hours with either the original or corrected reflectivity operators, but the corrected reflectivity operator achieves a better performance on the rainfall forecast than the original operator. The corrected reflectivity operator extends the effective time of radar data assimilation for the prediction of strong reflectivity. The physical variables analyzed with the corrected reflectivity operator present more reasonable mesoscale structures than those obtained with the original reflectivity operator. This suggests that the new statistical Z–R
