Severe-Thunderstorm Reanalysis Environments and Collocated Radiosonde Observations

Abstract

his research compares reanalysis-derived proxy soundings from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) with collocated observed radiosonde data across the central and eastern United States during the period 2000?11: 23 important parameters used for forecasting severe convection are examined. Kinematic variables such as 0?6-km bulk wind shear are best represented by this reanalysis, whereas thermodynamic variables such as convective available potential energy exhibit regional biases and are generally overestimated by the reanalysis. For thermodynamic parameters, parcel-ascent choice is an important consideration because of large differences in reanalysis low-level moisture fields versus observed ones. Results herein provide researchers with potential strengths and limitations of using NARR data for the purposes of depicting climatological information for hazardous convective weather and initializing model simulations. Similar studies should be considered for other reanalysis datasets.