METplus Practical Session Guide (Version 5.0) | Basic Verification Statistics Review

Introduction

This session is meant as a brief introduction (or review) of basic statistical verification methods applied for various classifications of meteorological variables, and to guide new users toward their usage within the METplus system. It is by no means a comprehensive review of all of the available statistical verification methods available in the atmospheric sciences, nor every single verification method available within the METplus system. More complete details on many of the techniques discussed here can be found in Wilks’ “Statistical Methods In The Atmospheric Sciences” (2019), Jolliffe and Stephenson’s “Forecast Verification; A Practitioner's Guide in Atmospheric Science” (2012) and the forecast verification web page hosted by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.  Upon completion of this session you will have a better understanding of five of the common classification groupings for meteorological verification and have access to generalized METplus examples of creating statistics from those categories.