Ensemble Forecasting of Extreme Events at Subkilometer Scales

Extreme weather events, such as heavy precipitation, strong winds, and convective storms, pose significant challenges to societies. Accurate forecasting of these events at high spatial and temporal resolutions, including uncertainty estimates, is crucial for effective disaster preparedness and mitigation.
In this work, we present recent developments in the EPS (Ensemble Prediction System) aspects of the Destination Earth On-Demand Extremes Digital Twin (DE_330_MF), which offers a highly configurable, on-demand workflow capable of detecting extreme weather events and triggering high-resolution forecasting at subkilometer scales. These features are valuable in supporting decision-makers in impact sectors such as hydrology, air quality, and energy. We showcase and evaluate the performance of the ensemble forecasting capabilities of this workflow with respect to prediction skill and uncertainty estimates.
We assess the workflow's performance for a selection of European extreme weather events relative to kilometer-scale forecasting systems like DINI-EPS, which is operationally deployed in the UWC West Consortium (Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Iceland). The subkilometer results from these investigations generally demonstrate skillful performance compared to the coarser models, providing potential added value for national meteorological services and decision-makers.