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Abstract
This research uses a high-resolution numerical weather prediction model to resolve hazardous convective weather east of the Continental Divide in the U.S. for two (historical and future) ten-year climate regimes. A regional hazardous convective weather model proxy is used to depict occurrences of tornadoes, damaging thunderstorm wind gusts, large hail at hourly intervals during the period of record. Results from this research provide an objective estimate of the historical occurrence of hazardous convective weather events, and how their spatio-temporal distribution may change in the future. In addition, reanalysis derived proxy soundings are compared to collocated observed soundings for the period 20002011. Specifically, important parameters used for forecasting severe convection are examined. These results provide researchers with the potential strengths and limitations of using reanalysis data for the purposes of depicting hazardous convective weather climatologies and initializing model simulations.