SAL—A Novel Quality Measure for the Verification of Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts

Abstract A novel object-based quality measure, which contains three distinct components that consider aspects of the structure (S), amplitude (A), and location (L) of the precipitation field in a prespecified domain (e.g., a river catchment) is introduced for the verification of quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF). This quality measure is referred to as SAL. The amplitude component A measures the relative deviation of the domain-averaged QPF from observations. Positive values of A indicate an overestimation of total precipitation; negative values indicate an underestimation. For the components S and L, coherent precipitation objects are separately identified in the forecast and obser…