Visualizing Process-Based Model Evaluation for Numerical Weather Prediction Models

Sammanfattning

The ability to predict the weather carries great societal benefit. To ascertain reliable predictions the numerical weather prediction models used need evaluation with particular attention paid to their representations of atmospheric processes. This type of process-based model evaluation is performed through comparison of large datasets of observational data and model results. The Year Of Polar Prediction Project site Model Intercomparison Project (YOPPsiteMIP) works to further process-based model evaluation in polar regions and has, to this end, created extensive datasets for these types of analysis. However, the lack of standardized tools to visualize the analyses carries with it significant limitations for both the usability of the data as well as the standardization of the visualizations created from it. To amend this, a set of visualization tools have been created. They were evaluated in the context of visualization quality and source code maintainability. They were found satisfactory in all cases except for the runtime. These tools further the ability to perform process-based analysis with the YOPPsiteMIP datasets in standardized formats. They are limited to the project specific MDF file type. However, with the continued spread of the MDF file type the tools become increasingly useful in furthering model evaluation on larger scales than YOPPsiteMIP.