North American Tropospheric Analyses from the LFM Model 1971-1995

NCEP's Limited Fine Mesh model output provides daily tropospheric analyses and 6 to 48-hour forecast fields for North America. The dataset covers a 24-year period from October 1971 through December 1995. Production of these grids was discontinued by NCEP after 1995.

Use Cases

• Analyze historical tropospheric pressure and temperature fields for climate trend studies.
• Validate modern weather prediction models against the LFM model's 6 to 48-hour forecast fields.
• Study the evolution of numerical weather prediction over North America using 24 years of daily analysis grids.

Strengths

• Covers a 24-year time series from 1971 to 1995.
• Includes both initial time analyses and multi-step forecast fields up to 48 hours.

Limitations

• Data production ceased in December 1995, making it temporally stale for contemporary analysis.
• Specific row count, column details, and spatial resolution are unknown.

Provenance

Source

National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) via SCIOPS.

Collection Method

Output from the operational Limited Fine Mesh (LFM) numerical weather prediction model.

Time Range

October 1971 to December 1995.

Freshness

Final update was in December 1995; dataset is archival.

Geography

North America.