A Hydrologist’s guide to the CRPS

Ruparell, K., Hunt, K. M. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1480-3755, Cloke, H. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1472-868X, Prudhomme, C., Pappenberger, F. and Chantry, M., (2025) A Hydrologist’s guide to the CRPS. Technical Report. European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts doi: 10.21957/16101872b5

Abstract/Summary

The Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS) is a vital metric in earth system forecasting, how-ever it is still unintuitive for many users. In hydrology, we are increasingly transitioning to proba-bilistic and ensemble decisions making, and so informed use of metrics such as the CRPS is crucial. In this technical memorandum, we provide an overview of the CRPS. We highlight its growing im-portance, particularly in the context of machine learning, and then explain its relationship to various other metrics and scores commonly used in earth system forecasting, such as the Brier score and Mean Absolute Error. We then go on to apply the CRPS in the context of hydrological forecasting.

Item Type	Report (Technical Report)
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127797
Identification Number/DOI	10.21957/16101872b5
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts
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