Objectively and manually identified characteristics of mid-latitude storms: A comparison for Siberian region

A comprehensive intercomparison of midlatitude storm characteristics is presented. Extratropical storm characteristics were derived from 16 reanalysis-based objective automated algorithms for cyclone identification and tracking from the IMILAST project and from manual method based on an expert inspection of weather charts. The analysis was carried out for the Siberian region (50-80N, 60-110E) for two seasons (winter of 2007/08 and summer of 2008). Most of the automated algorithms show 1.5-3 times more cyclones and 3-5 times more cyclone tracks in the Siberian region compare to the manual method. The algorithms show a good agreement with the manual method for spatial distribution of cyclones and tracks number with spatial correlation coefficient varies around 0.8-0.9 in summer and around 0.7-0.9 in winter for most of the algorithms. Two ranking measures were used to evaluate similarity of objective algorithms with the manual method.