The Hfip HIGH-RESOLUTION Hurricane Forecast Test: Overview and Results of Track and Intensity Forecast Verification

Abstract

The Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) High-Resolution Hurricane (HRH) Test was conducted by the Developmental Testbed Center from March 2008 through September 2009 in order to assess the impacts of using higher horizontal resolution in hurricane numerical forecasting. The plan for this test was developed jointly by a broad range of community members, including specialists in hurricanes, numerical modeling, and forecast verification. The test focused on 69 retrospectives cases from the 2005 and 2007 hurricane seasons. Six independent modeling groups participated in this effort employing three configurations of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the operational GFDL model, the Navy's tropical cyclone model, and a model from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM). This presentation will provide an overview of the HRH Test and summarize the intramodel differences in track and intensity errors for the low- versus high-resolution configurations of the participating forecast models. A companion abstract by L. Nance et al. entitled “HFIP High Resolution Hurricane Forecast Test: Beyond the Traditional Verification Metrics” discussed advanced verification methodologies applied to the same dataset.