EOL/RAL Joint Seminar - Observed and Simulated Characteristics of a Persistent Cold Air Pool in the Columbia River Basin

Persistent cold air pools frequently form during wintertime in the Columbia River Basin in Oregon and Washington, which is home to a large amount of wind energy production. To integrate wind energy produced during cold-pool events into the electrical grid, accurate forecasts of these events are necessary, including the rapid changes in wind speed that often occur during the cold pool decay phase. In a first step, I used comprehensive in situ and remote sensing observations collected during the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) to study the spatio-temporal characteristics of a strong and persistent cold air pool and the involved processes. Second, I evaluated the forecast performance of three different versions of NOAA’s High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model (HRRR) during the cold-pool event.