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RTMA/URMA land-water mask Q and data provider Q

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Edward Townsend, modified 3 Years ago.

RTMA/URMA land-water mask Q and data provider Q

Youngling Posts: 9 Join Date: 8/18/13 Recent Posts

Hello, 

1)  I was curious if there was a way to actually view the land-sea/water mask used for the northwest and our area? 

I'm interested in viewing the land-water distinction that is used to better understand the RTMA/URMA analyses for our area, I'm hoping it will help us better understand the affect of land obs on water areas.

Some background: We often have three apparent areas that stand out within a small region that I believe may be tied to the land-water mask. The Wallula Gap that extends north to the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) that is labeled "a", a single pixel east of Hermiston on the Columbia River labeled "b," and a section of the Columbia River by the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge labeled "c."

To help show these areas, here are two examples. One from GFE (image 1) and the other is from the NBM/RTMA/URMA Prototype Viewer (image 2) with the labels from above. They show up quite prominently of course in the usual situations (when it is unseasonably hot in the Summer as cold spots, transition seasons, etc.).


That said, I think we are pretty pleased with the first one, Wallula Gap on north or "a." It appeared to be reasonable and more representative this summer. For our own benefit, we did an exercise with a Kestrel thermometer and took some measurements in this very data sparse area and saw it was considerably cooler in that area. That said, it may have been a couple degrees still too cool (3-6 F). Nonetheless, the cooler analysis with URMA appeared more representative than what our coarse analysis with MatchObsAll would have.

Specifically for the lone cold-bias pixel east of Hermiston (area "b") that sticks out between adjacent warm pixels. Is this pixel being treated as water in the land-water mask?  That said, I know improvements are anticipated with the HRRR v4 upgrade in early December as it has a built-in inland lake model that will be implemented. Would you expect these areas to see improvement from this update?

2) I recently noticed new stations in this area when looking at the KML station obs this Fall. The obs didn't appear to be present over the summer from the providers: Washington State University Ag Met (WSAgMet) and WxFlow (see the stations circled in image 3). Do you all have any info on WxFlow by chance? For example, one site from 'WxFlow' was XKEL. However, I couldn't find this provider's stations on the madis viewer (https://madis-data.ncep.noaa.gov/MadisSurface/). Do you all know a way by chance to view them online somewhere? 

I appreciate you looking into this for me.
 
Thank you,
 
Ed Townsend
 

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Matthew Morris, modified 3 Years ago.

RE: RTMA/URMA land-water mask Q and data provider Q

Youngling Posts: 158 Join Date: 12/6/17 Recent Posts
Hi Ed,

I have plotted the land/sea mask used for the RTMA/URMA downscaling, focused on the area of your figures.  Water pixels = 0, while land pixels = 1. [Note that there is an additional land/sea mask used for background error escarpments, but this mask will not be able to resolve small rivers/lakes.  This mask is used to limit the influence of land (water) observations on water (land).]

urma2p5_landsea_mask_production.png
There are several pixels treated as water along the Columbia River, including the pixel labeled "b" in your figures, but the river is not resolved in its entirety.  The following figures show the URMA background and analysis valid 15Z on 17 October 2020.  The analysis figure shows that pixel b is at most 1-2F cooler than the neighboring pixels.

t2m_Washington_URMA_GES.gif
t2m_Washington_URMA_ANL.gif
The WxFlow and WSAgMet networks are restricted, so there likely isn't a way to view those observations online.  Following implementation of RTMA/URMA v2.8 in July, there was a bug introduced to the scripts used to generate the KML observation files that was allowing the restricted mesonet data to be included in the KML files posted to the FTP server.  This bug was corrected with the 13Z URMA cycle on Monday, November 30th, so data from those networks will no longer be included in the KML files posted on the FTP server.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Matt

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 4:08 PM VLab Notifications <VLab.Notifications@noaa.gov> wrote:

Hello, 

1)  I was curious if there was a way to actually view the land-sea/water mask used for the northwest and our area? 

I'm interested in viewing the land-water distinction that is used to better understand the RTMA/URMA analyses for our area, I'm hoping it will help us better understand the affect of land obs on water areas.

Some background: We often have three apparent areas that stand out within a small region that I believe may be tied to the land-water mask. The Wallula Gap that extends north to the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) that is labeled "a", a section of the Columbia River by the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge labeled "b", and a single pixel east of Hermiston on the Columbia River labeled "c."

To help show these areas, here are two examples. One from GFE (image 1) and the other is from the NBM/RTMA/URMA Prototype Viewer (image 2) with the labels from above. They show up quite prominently of course in the usual situations (when it is unseasonably hot in the Summer as cold spots, transition seasons, etc.).


That said, I think we are pretty pleased with the first one, Wallula Gap on north or "a." It appeared to be reasonable and more representative this summer. For our own benefit, we did an exercise with a Kestrel thermometer and took some measurements in this very data sparse area and saw it was considerably cooler in that area. That said, it may have been a couple degrees still too cool (3-6 F). Nonetheless, the cooler analysis with URMA appeared more representative than what our coarse analysis with MatchObsAll would have.

Specifically for the lone cold-bias pixel east of Hermiston, it appears that it sticks out between the adjacent warm pixels. Is this pixel being treated as water in the land-water mask?  That said, I know improvements are anticipated with the HRRR v4 upgrade in early December as it has a built-in inland lake model that will be implemented. Would you expect these areas to see improvement from this update?

2) I recently noticed new stations in this area when looking at the KML station obs this Fall. The obs didn't appear to be present over the summer from the providers: Washington State University Ag Met (WSAgMet) and WxFlow (see the stations circled in image 3). Do you all have any info on WxFlow by chance? For example, one site from 'WxFlow' was XKEL. However, I couldn't find this provider's stations on the madis viewer (https://madis-data.ncep.noaa.gov/MadisSurface/). Do you all know a way by chance to view them online somewhere? 

I appreciate you looking into this for me.
 
Thank you,
 
Ed Townsend

--
Edward Townsend RTMA/URMA Discussion Group Virtual Lab Forum https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/715073/discussions-forums-/-/message_boards/view_message/12656265VLab.Notifications@noaa.gov

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