Alertness at Arctic Frontiers
/An inspiration for the final year of Alertness.
This week saw the Arctic Frontiers conference in a new digital form. This was the 15th Arctic Frontiers conference. Arctic Frontiers is a global scientific conference on economic, societal and environmental sustainable growth in the north.
Arctic Frontiers provides a forum for dialogue and communication between science, government and industry in the Arctic.
Several researchers from Alertness gave presentations and contributions to the conference this year. Alertness lead Jørn Kristiansen was co-lead for the science committee of Session 6: Advanced prediction capabilities for the Arctic and beyond.
“With the expressed ambition to develop world leading capacity for the delivery of reliable and accurate Arctic weather forecasts and warnings for the benefit of maritime operations, business and society, Alertness has a natural place at Arctic Frontiers”, explains Alertness lead Jørn Kristiansen.
“The invited talks by Thomas Jung (AWI), Irina Sandu (ECMWF) and Ian Renfrew (UEA) not only set the scene for this session but also gave the wider context for Alertness.“, he continues.
Alertness is embedded in an existing value chain structure for short-range weather prediction which to a large extent is in place and operational at MET Norway. It benefits from and contributes to the long-term initiative of WMO WWRP PPP/YOPP.
Marvin Kähnert giving his presentation at arctic frontiers.
“As was also evident in the invited talks and the following discussion, Alertness ties academic excellence into the end-user experience and knowledge that is derived from continuous service delivery at MET Norway - Science for Services and Society.”
Alertness researchers Morten Køltzow, Marvin Kähnert, Matilda Hallerstig, Roger Randriamampianina, Máté Mile and Rafael Grote presented recent developments to AROME Arctic related to data assimilation, sub-grid scale parameterisations and generating ensembles employing a comprehensive set of observations and well observed case studies, including high-impact weather events like polar lows. See below for details of the presentations.
“Together with several other presentations we learned about prediction capabilities, and their research needs, of weather, water, ice and climate across the pan-Arctic domain”, Kristiansen says.
“The day concluded with a panel discussion on recent scientific accomplishments for advanced climate, weather and sea-ice Arctic forecast information and related key social, environmental and economic needs. This made for an interesting session and inspiration for the final year of Alertness”, he concludes.
The presentations are available on request, please contact us.
Presentations given from Alertness researchers
Configuration of a regional Arctic NWP system to maximize predictive capacity
By Morten A. Køltzow, Andrew Singleton and Rafael Grote, Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Research highlights
Both improved resolution and the introduction of EPS to the MET Norway regional Arctic NWP system, AROME-Arctic, will contribute to a significant improvement in Arctic forecast quality.
For high-impact events the added value in terms of objective verification metrics of EPS is higher than the added value provided by increased resolution.
Configuration choices for an Arctic NWP system related to initialization methods and choices of regional domain may have a detrimental impact on the forecast capability.
The interplay of parameterisation schemes in high latitudes: A CAO example with AROME-Arctic tendencies
By Marvin Kähnert, Harald Sodemann (both University of Bergen, Geophysical Institute, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research) and Teresa Valkonen (Norwegian Meteorological Institute)
Research highlights
This study quantifies the compensation between the turbulence and shallow convection scheme during a CAO in AROME-Arctic.
This study reveals the decisive roles of model intern boundary layer types on the interplay and activity of parameterisation schemes.
The impact of a modified treatment on the shallow convection scheme on tendency interaction, resolved vertical velocities and cloud morphology is demonstrated.
How grid-spacing and convection representation affected the wind speed forecasts of four polar lows
By Matilda Hallerstig (NORCE Climate)
Research highlights
The quality of polar low forecasts from the ECMWF deterministic model versions is more sensitive to the handling of convection than to horizontal grid spacing.
During polar lows, the added value of limited area model AROME-Arctic is highest in coastal areas and over land.
Improving the forecasting capabilities in the Arctic with satellite radiance assimilation and enhanced representation of sea ice and snow cover
By Roger Randriamampianina, Yuri Batrak and Roohollah Azad (Norwegian Meteorological Institute)
Research highlights
Both Arctic and high latitude observations are important for an accurate Arctic regional model.
Satellite ice surface temperature products applied in surface DA show a potential for further improvement of the sea ice representation.
Including the snow cover over sea ice helps to considerably reduce the ice surface temperature bias in an Arctic model.
Advanced use of scatterometer observations in mesoscale Arctic data assimilation: the supermodding method
By Maté Mile, Roger Randriamampianina (both Norwegian Meteorological Institute) Gert-Jan Marseille (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute)
Research highlights
This study points out that the use of satellite observations is crucial in high latitude numerical weather prediction (NWP).
The studied method (called supermodding) can reduce the error of scatterometer observations in an Arctic data assimilation system.
The Arctic weather forecasts are also improved by the supermodding and the advanced use of scatterometer observations.
Targeted Sea Surface Temperature Perturbations
By Rafael Grote, Rafael and Andre Singleton (Norwegian Meteorological Institute)
Research highlights
This study presents a novel, fast and flexible method of generating sea surface temperature perturbations for the initialisation of an Ensemble Prediction system using the AROME Arctic model.