Importance of Cold Pools to NCEP Mesoscale Eta Model Forecasts

Abstract

The cold pool, a pool of evaporatively cooled downdraft air that spreads out horizontally along the ground beneath a precipitating cloud, is often a factor in severe weather and heavy precipitation events. Unfortunately, cold pools are not well sampled by the present observational network and are rarely depicted in numerical model initial conditions. A procedure to identify and insert cold pools into the 29-km Eta Model is developed and tested on seven cases during 1995. Results suggest that when the large-scale forcing is strong, the inclusion of cold pools produces only slight changes in the forecasts. However, for the one case in which the large-scale forcing is relatively weak, the inclusion of cold pools produces significant changes in many of the model fields. These initial results, while not conclusive, suggest that the incorporation of cold pools, and other mesoscale features, may be important to the improvement of numerical guidance for severe weather and heavy precipitation forecasting.