Status of nowcasting thunderstorm initiation: where do we go from here?
Rita Roberts, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and E. J. Nelson, J. Pinto, T. Saxen, and C. L. Phillips The NCAR automated, short term, convective storm nowcasting (Auto-nowcaster) system is a fairly unique nowcasting system combining radar, satellite, surface station, sounding, and numerical model data. It incorporates not only the detection and extrapolation of existing storms, but provides storm initiation, growth and decay nowcasts as well. Arguably, the greatest challenge is in providing accurate spatial and temporal nowcasts of new storm initiation. Several years have been spent attempting to obtain accurate storm initiation nowcasts using a fuzzy logic-based engine to combine predictor fields from observational datasets. More recently, predictor fields derived from frequently-updated numerical model output representing the stability of the atmosphere have been included in the suite of fields used to assess the likelihood for new convective storms. A key ingredient in accurately predicting sto
