Impact of Resolution and Design on the U.S. Navy Global Ensemble Performance in the Tropics

The performance of the U.S. Navy globalatmosphericensemble prediction systemis examinedwith a focus on tropical winds and tropical cyclone tracks. Ensembles are run at a triangular truncation of T119, T159, and T239, with 33, 17, and 9 ensemble members, respectively, to evaluate the impact of resolution versus the number of ensemble member tradeoffs on ensemble performance. Results indicate that the T159 and T239 ensemble mean tropical cyclone track errors are significantly smaller than those of the T119 ensemble out to 4days.For ensemble forecastsofupper-andlower-tropospherictropicalwinds,increasingresolutionhasonly a small impact on ensemble mean root-mean-square error for wind speed, but does improve Brier scores for 10-m wind speed at the 5 m s 21 threshold. In addition to the resolution tests, modifications to the ensemble transform initial perturbation methodology and inclusion of stochastic kinetic energy backscatter are also evaluated. Stochastic kinetic energy backscatter substantially increases the ensemble spread and improves Brier scores in the tropics, but for the most part does not significantly reduce ensemble mean tropical cyclone track error.