Abstract:
Raw ensemble forecasts display large errors in predicting precipitation amounts and its forecast uncertainty, especially in mountainous regions where local e.ects are often not captured. Therefore, statistical post-processing is typically applied to obtain automatically corrected weather forecasts where precipitation represents one of the most challenging quantities. This study applies the non-homogenous regression framework as a start-of-the-art ensemble post-processing technique to predict a full forecast distribution and improves its forecast performance with three statistical tricks. First of all, a novel split-type approach e.ectively accounts for perfect ensemble predictions that can occur. Additionally, the statistical model assumes a censored logistic distribution to deal with the heavy tails of precipitation amounts. Finally, the optimization of regression coefficients for the scale parameter is investigated with suitable link-functions. These three refinements are tested for stations in the European Alps for lead-times from +24h to +48h and accumulation periods of 24 and 6 hours. Results highlight an improvement due to a combination of the three statistical tricks against the default post-processing method which does not account for perfect ensemble predictions. Probabilistic forecasts for precipitation amounts as well as the probability of precipitation events could be improved, especially for 6 hour sums.