METRo: A New Model for Road-Condition Forecasting in Canada

Abstract

A numerical model to forecast road conditions, Model of the Environment and Temperature of Roads (METRo), has been developed to run at Canadian weather centers. METRo uses roadside observations from road weather information systems stations as input, together with meteorological forecasts from the operational Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) model of the Canadian Meteorological Centre; the meteorologist can modify this forecast using the ?SCRIBE? interface. METRo solves the energy balance at the road surface and the heat conduction in the road material to calculate the temperature evolution; it also accounts for water accumulation on the road in liquid and solid form. Radiative fluxes reaching the surface are taken from the GEM model in automatic mode or are parameterized as a function of cloud cover and temperature when run in manual mode. The road-condition forecast is done in three stages: initialization of the road temperature profile using past observations, coupling of the forecast with observations during the overlap period when the meteorological forecast and the roadside observations are both available, and the forecast itself. The coupling stage allows for adjusting the radiative fluxes to local conditions. Results for road temperature are presented for three stations in Ontario for a period of 3 months. The 24-h forecasts are issued 2 times per day at 0300 and 1500 LT. Overall, about one-half of the time the error in surface road temperature (verified every 20 min) is within ±2 K, and the nighttime rms error is about 2 K. The impact of the coupling stage is large and allows METRo to produce automatic forecasts almost as good as the manual ones, especially for the first few hours. When METRo is run in manual mode, several nearby stations can use the same meteorological input, saving preparation time for the meteorologist. METRo also contains a mechanism for correcting systematic errors at each station, and it is hoped that this capability will permit its application to many new sites without major adjustments.