Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Forum

More on RUC QC implementation today

Posted By: Stan Benjamin
Date: 22-February-06 2232Z

In Response To: QC implementation today (Geoff Manikin)

A little more to add to Geoff Manikin's post this morning. An increased number of events from a persistent warm temperature bias (2-5K) in a few commercial aircraft have been noted in the past few weeks. These biases, especially for ascent or descents, can result in perturbations in mid-upper level heights via hydrostatic intergration (e.g., 2/16-12z, 2/21-12z, undoubtedly happening at other times also). The new RUC QC check implemented in the operational RUC at 15z detects the stronger of these events. Geoff mentioned also about the parallel RUC runs continuing at NCEP with additional new QC checks and improved convection (see comparisons at http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/ruc2/para per Geoff). A complete write-up of the current analysis/model changes in these runs are available at http://ruc.noaa.gov/ruc13_docs/RUC-testing-Feb06.htm. There are also examples of the improved QC and convective precipitation from the Dec05 NCEP Model Review meeting presentation on the RUC in slides 29-33 of http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/NCEP-EMCModelReview2005/NCEP-OperReview-Dec05-RUC.pdf. These slides give some more 'flesh' to these other upcoming changes, pending further testing. -- Stan Benjamin -------------------- [Posted by Geoff Manikin this morning]: Alert users (extra thanks to Steve Silberberg at AWC) have noticed some bad 500 mb analyses in the operational RUC during the past week. An example can be found at http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/rucsvrfcst/images/t12z/50000.gif (note the Memphis, TN area as well as Miami). The problems have been traced back to at least one aircraft that has been providing a fair amount of bad data. A crisis implementation was made at 15z today to eliminate all data from a particular flight for a given hour if the mean of the differences between the set of obs from that aircraft and the model first guess exceeds a chosen threshold. It should be noted that while we hope that this fix will prevent the most egregious situations, we can't be totally certain of this. A set of more complete changes to the quality control of observations has been running in parallel (http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/ruc2/para/) for several weeks now, but it is not quite ready for implementation. We therefore ask users to please keep a close eye on the analyses and report any significant problems either in the forum or directly to us.

Messages In This Thread

QC implementation today -- Geoff Manikin -- 22-February-06 1655Z

More on RUC QC implementation today -- Stan Benjamin -- 22-February-06 2232Z

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