The Central European limited‐area ensemble forecasting system: ALADIN‐LAEF

The Central European limited-area ensemble forecasting system ALADIN-LAEF (Aire Limitee Adaptation Dynamique Developpement InterNational—Limited-Area Ensemble Forecasting) has been developed within the framework of ALADIN international cooperation and the Regional Cooperation for Limited-Area modelling in Central Europe (RC LACE). It was put into pre-operation in March 2007. The main feature of the pre-operational ALADIN-LAEF was the dynamical downscaling of the global ensemble forecast from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). In 2009, ALADIN-LAEF was upgraded with several methods for dealing with the forecast uncertainties to improve the forecast quality. These are: (1) the blending method, which combines the large-scale uncertainty generated by ECMWF singular vectors with the small-scale perturbations resolved by ALADIN breeding into atmospheric initial condition perturbations; (2) the multi-physics approach, wherein different physics schemes are used for different forecast members to account for model uncertainties; and (3) the non-cycling surface breeding technique, which generates surface initial condition perturbations. This article illustrates the technical details of the updated ALADIN-LAEF and investigates its performance. Detailed verification of the upgraded ALADIN-LAEF and a comparison with its first implementation (dynamical downscaling of ECMWF ensemble forecasts) are presented for a two-month period in summer 2007. The results show better performance and skill for the upgraded system due to the better representation of forecast uncertainties. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society

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