Real-time hourly objective analysis of surface observations

This paper describes the intensive effort needed to assure the metadata are correct for each station, to develop efficient quality control procedures, and to alleviate spatial and temporal discontinuities in the analyses. One of the features added to the analysis package is the capability to utilize an observation from the previous hour if the station did not report at the analysis hour. An adjustment is made to the previous hour's observation in order to account for possible diurnal changes from the previous hour to the analysis hour. In addition, the radius of influence computed on an individual station basis is incorporated to handle a heterogeneous distribution of the observations. This paper focuses on the analyses of temperature and dewpoint over the conterminous United States on the NDFD grid. 2011 NWS (National Weather Service) STI (Office of Science and Technology Integration) Submitted Public Domain 1931