Assessing Space Weather Prediction Using the Enhanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus)
Abstract
Model Evaluation Tools (MET) is a highly-configurable, state-of-the-art suite of verification tools developed primarily by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and supported to the community via the Development Testbed Center (DTC). METplus wraps these tools with python, allowing for complex verification workflows to be simplified and adding generalized capability to read any model data source with user-written python codes. While MET and METplus were originally developed for verification and evaluation of atmospheric numerical weather prediction models, METplus is being continually developed and expanded into new prediction domains, including both tropospheric weather (tropical cyclones, short-term weather, sub-seasonal to seasonal climate). Through funding from the Commercial Weather Data Program (CWDP)'s public-private partnership, NCAR and NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are collaborating to expand MET into the space weather domain. This capability has then been expanded through work with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Coordinate Community Modeling Center (CCMC). Recent work has focused on adapting METplus's grid-to-grid tools to evaluate the impact of radio occultation (RO) measurements on modeled ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC). To accomplish this, we are evaluating several SWPC runs of the GloTEC model assimilated with and without COSMIC RO observations for several past space weather events. MET allows the results to be stratified by region, by the number of observations per voxel (via a time-varying quality flag field), and to be compared with climatological values. A METplus use-case (example) has been developed for the space weather community to illustrate the METplus workflow for an end-to-end evaluation from model data to standard metrics and plots. Future work will use MET to evaluate the quality and impact of vendor-provided CWDP RO data. Work is also focused on developing use-cases to read in fields being compared by CCMC. This conference paper will summarize the current state of the tools and outlines plans for future MET development and space weather evaluation.
- Publication:
-
43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 28 January - 4 February
- Pub Date:
- January 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021cosp...43E2354J