A Regional Ensemble Prediction System Based on Moist Targeted Singular Vectors and Stochastic Parameter Perturbations

Abstract A regional ensemble prediction system (REPS) with the limited-area version of the Canadian Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) model at 15-km horizontal resolution is developed and tested. The total energy norm singular vectors (SVs) targeted over northeastern North America are used for initial and boundary perturbations. Two SV perturbation strategies are tested: dry SVs with dry simplified physics and moist SVs with simplified physics, including stratiform condensation and convective precipitation as well as dry processes. Model physics uncertainties are partly accounted for by stochastically perturbing two parameters: the threshold vertical velocity in the trigger function of the Kain–Fritsch deep convection scheme, and the threshold humidity in the Sundqvist explicit scheme. The perturbations are obtained from first-order Markov processes. Short-range ensemble forecasts in summer with 16 members are performed for five different experiments. The experiments employ different perturbation and ...

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