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Interpreting Weather Data - The Forecasting Process

Persistence Forecast

"Its sunny clear blue skies this morning, it should be a great day for the picnic this afternoon."

Trend Forecast

"the cold front is moving at 30 MPH and it is about 60 miles away, it should be here in about two hours."

Forecasting Methods

Basic Short Term - For a few hours

Analogue Forecast

"Learn from history."

Comparing current charts to historical charts to predict what will occur.

There are far too many variables for this to be an accurate method.

But it is useful for predicting things such as min. and max tempurature for a day.

Advanced Methods

Meteorological Forecast

"Human method"

A forecaster uses scientific knowledge of atmospheric process to predict the weather.

Numerical Weather Prediction

"Machine method"

Uses powerful supercomputer to determine/predict millions of variables over a 5-10 min span.

Then repeats that process over and over until a forecast for the next day or two has developed

Dissemination

Observations

Products are sent to NWS and other public and private agencies

Communication

Information from observations is relayed to three World Meteorological Centers located in Washington DC, Moscow, and Melbourne

Processing

In the US, this information is sent to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Camp Springs, Maryland

Accuracy and Limitations

Weather forecast has come a long way since the use of the supercomputer but there are still problems.

  • Large distances between stations and time between reports often present unknown variables.
  • The atmosphere doesn't always behave as the computer thinks it should.

NCEP Analyzes the data, develops forecasts, and creates charts and reports.

Large scale events such as large cold waves and significant storms can be predicted accurately several days in advance.

However, more short term events such as tornadoes and some kinds of wind shear are much harder to predict.

Regardless, the further ahead in time the forecast is, the less accurate it becomes.

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