Improving Numerical Weather Prediction in Low Latitudes by Optimizing Diffusion Coefficients

The horizontal diffusion coefficients of the operational model (T42L9) in numerical weather prediction are optimized by the steepest descent search of multi-dimensional optimization. In order to improve prediction accuracy in low latitudes, the optimum horizontal diffusion coefficients are chosen, with changing variation of the basic diffu-sion coefficient with the passage of time, and later forecasts are also made better. In view of the averages of forecast verifications of 9 cases, the forecasts with optimum diffusion coefficients are an improvement on operational forecasts. It means that the forecasts are got much better with optimum values of some important parameters by optimization in numerical weather prediction.