Evaluation of Eta Weather Forecast Model over Central Africa

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to investigate the skills of Eta weather forecast model in forecasting precipitations, tem-perature and sea level pressure. The model domain extends from 6˚W to 29˚E and 6˚S to 21˚N. The model is run with a horizontal resolution of 48 km with 45 vertical levels and initial and boundary conditions were given by National Cen-ters for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) 00UTC operational analysis. All the forecasts are for period of 48 hours. They were compared to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) derived data for precipitations and NCEP/ NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) analysis for temperature and sea level pressure. The results show that Eta model predicts fairly good 2 meters temperature and the sea level pressure. Spatial distributions of precipita-tions are not well simulated by the model.