A Local AFOS MOS Program (LAMP) and its Application to Wind Prediction

Abstract

The Techniques Development Laboratory has a project called the local AFOS MOS Program (LAMP). Its purpose is the development of a system which can produce at any hour of the day in a Weather Service Forecast Office (WSFO) environment Model Output Statistics (MOS) forecasts for essentially all locations for which the WSFO makes routine forecasts. These forecasts will be for most weather elements and for projections of 1 to about 20 hours. Inputs will include centrally produced MOS forecasts, hourly observations, radar data, and a few forecast fields from the National Meteorological Center's primary guidance model. LAMP includes three rather simple advective models: one to forecast sea level pressure, one to forecast 1000?500 mb moisture and precipitation, and one to forecast sensible weather such as ceiling height and precipitation type. This paper describes LAMP, its three advective models, and the results of experiments in surface wind prediction. It is concluded that LAMP wind forecasts are considerably better than the currently available MOS guidance forecasts for projections of one to several hours and are also considerably better than persistence except for projections of only one or two hours.