Workshop on Communicating Weather Forecast Uncertainty

1. Introduction to the Workshop Paul Schultz

2. Goals • Survey and discuss progress toward the mandate of communicating uncertainty in weather forecasts • OS&T asks ISST: • Is probabilistic forecast grid preparation good use of forecaster time? • What are the best WFO practices in DS today? Tomorrow? • GSD asks ISST: • What does your workstation need to do?

3. Premise Representing uncertainty in weather forecasts takes three forms: Probabilities, alternative scenarios, and DS by the forecaster

4. Probabilities • First workshop focused on probabilistic forecast production • Offered, scrapped, and developed a conceptual forecast process • Prototyped some tools on ALPS • Worked through two cases • Initiated PFP • This workshop we’ll show you a lot of that without the hands-on

5. Alternative scenarios • Examples: SREF, NAEFS • New NWP products in the works • Main public sector drivers are aviation and hydrology • Users looking for effects of weather uncertainty in the context of their DSS • Private sector: install another server at MDL, they’ll download it all, we’ll never hear a word • Directly useful in WFO ops? • Absolutely (Lothar case)

6. Stats from the Lothar storm • 130 mph gusts in Brittany; 105 mph in Paris; 150 mph in Zurich • Along with smaller “Martin” storm, 140 dead, 88 in France alone • 4% of French forests destroyed • 2 million people without electricity • Road, air, train traffic disrupted for days • 5 billion Euro insured loss; ~20 billion total

7. Lothar storm case

8. Decision support • Location-specific • Pablo has hurricanes, Brad has snowstorms, they do different DS tasks • User-specific • BOU’s airport snow probabilities, SLC’s ski resort product, those are different products • Themes?