Advances on the use of NAEFS products on operational meteorology

and research in Mexico

René Lobato-SánchezAlberto Hernández-Unzón

• The first operational numerical model was installed in late spring of 2000 (MM5). Now we have both MM5 and WRF running in a 24 parallel processor server.

• A complete change of perspective among Mexican forecasters (change of skeptisism became critical).

• Now, the meteorological forecasts depend heavily on numerical models, little synoptic man-made analysis is done now.

Bit of a Background

• The culture of using ensambled outputs has now becomed a standard resource for operational forecasters in Mexico.

• SMN (operational) and IMTA (research) are among the institutions who extensively uses those.

• Regional offices of CONAGUA are promoted to use NAEFS at operatonal level.

• IMTA uses extensively NAEFS products for its daily meteorological bulletins

• Outputs from CMC are used more extensively.

• CMC ensamble covers the Mexico entirely

• Probabilistic maps and epsgrams are consulted very day (more locations needed)

• Ensambles from NCEP have good skills but hard to read a regional spatial scales

Good at synoptic scales

Probabilistic QPF is very important and widely used.

Request:Could outputs go further south?

North American Ensemble Forecast

System8 to 14 Day Temperature

Guidance

• Time scale is very important, especially for the monitoring of the onset of the rainy season

Week two temperature forecast

probabilistic forecast of temperature

anomaly over the NAEFS

Could we add political state boundaries for

Mexico?

Different products in use at SMN’s Forecast Office

Different products in use at SMN’s Forecast Office

Prob. Wind Speed Prob. Pcpn over 5 mm

Prob. Max. Sfc. Air Temp.Over 30°C

Extreme Forecast Index as in ECWMF

Wind Gust total pcpn index

Sfc temp

Daily analysis

Since November 2007, SE Mexico is receiving special attention

Could we add Relative Humidity?

Mixing probabilistic with

deterministic models on both GC and mesoscale

models

Due to budgetary restrictions, upper air soundings cannot be launched at all sites (17), therefore have to schedule some stations at 12Z and others to 0Z

What is the optimal scheme for NAEFS?

• Launch all at the same time ?• Which sites and time would be more useful?

In Hydrology it has been detected the possibility of using NAEFS ensamble gridded outputs in order to do streamflow forecasting

Can we have access to the grid ensemble output on a operational basis?

Proposal of Required products for MEXICOProbabilistic Products from NAEFS

Are there specific needs that NAEFS requieres from SMN ?

THANK YOU !!!