NMQ Verification System (QVS) Tutorial
Introduction
The National Mosaic and Q2 system is an experimental system designed to improve QPE and eventually very short-term QPF. The URL is www.nmq.noaa.gov. This document provides a tutorial for navigation through the site and descriptions of the products.
There are 4 major components of the NMQ system:
- Data ingest
- Products
- Analysis tools
- Verification
Data ingest
The NMQ system ingests data from a number of sensors and products from various sources:
- 128 WSR-88D radars (5 min)
- Gauge data set that includes 5500 gauges from many different networks (hourly)
- Satellite IR images (15 min)
- Rapid Update Cycle 20 km resolution (RUC) model analysis variables (hourly)
- NWS Hydro Estimator (satellite-based) precipitation (hourly)
- NWS Stage IV precipitation (1, 6, and 24 hour)
Products
NMQ creates and displays many experimental products derived from radar, satellite, numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and gauges, both individually and combined. Appendix A gives a brief description of each acronym.
Data and processing flow
- Ingest all data (they arrive at different rates)
- Quality control radar data
- Derive vertical profile of reflectivity from each radar (see VPR tab)
- Analyze radar data to 8 tiles (see Inventory section below) and stitch the tiles together to form the CONUS 3D grid (1 km x 1 km x 31 levels; see 3DMosaicLevels tab)
- Derive hybrid scan reflectivity and other products (see 3DMosaicDerived tab)
- Produce experimental Q2 products (see Q2 tab)
- Use gauges to validate Q2 and other products (see Gauge tab)
Analysis tools
Examination of sources of precipitation data and key geographic and environmental conditions is paramount to understanding the behavior of the Q2 experimental product. Various tools are made available to compare different fields and their relationships to geographic features, such as terrain and radar location. Time series analyses can be done for up to 4 variables.
Verification
The verification section relies heavily on NWS operational gauge data streams. This section (AKA QPE Verification System - QVS) allows the users to compare gauges to any QPE product and provides several statistical metrics.
