Improving the Prediction of Weather, Climate and other Atmospheric Phenomena

Over the last several decades, the skill of numerical weather prediction is generally considered to have increased at an average rate of about one day per decade. Thus, the skill of today’s four-day forecast is equivalent to the skill of a three-day forecast of a decade earlier. The rate of improvement is even slower for the forecast variables needed most by society, such as the prediction of heavy rainfall. This relatively slow, linear rate of improvement is not sufficient to keep place with the demand for accurate weather information in the world today, where an exponentially growing world population places an ever-increasing number of people in areas at risk for weather disasters.

Researchers from CNES prepare to launch EOL's Driftsonde on its maiden operational voyage on Monday, August 28, 2006 in Zinder, Niger in support of hurricane genesis research during the THORPEX African Monsoon Multi-disciplinary Analysis (T-AMMA) campaign. The balloon will cover remote areas not easily accessible by conventional sounding platforms.  Data from the dropsondes deployed from the balloon can fill critical gaps in data coverage and can ultimately help to meet the goals of improving meteorlogists' ability to forecast catastrophic hurricanes with more accuracy and lead time than what is currently possible.

THORPEX support with Hurricane Genesis Research [Highlight]

THORPEX support with Hurricane Genesis Research [Highlight]

In response to this challenge, the approximately 180 nations and territories of the World Meteorological Congress initiated the THORPEX (THe Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment) under the World Weather Research Program to conduct research that will accelerate the rate of improvement in the predictive skill of high-impact weather and to improve the utilization of weather information for the benefit to society, the economy and environmental stewardship. The time-scale of interest to THORPEX is the 1 to 14-day forecast with collaborative efforts aimed at seasonal prediction. THORPEX began its implementation phase in 2005 and EOL has been involved in the national and international leadership of the program. 

During the past year, EOL staff have played a leadership role in a major activity that supports NCAR strategic priority of improving weather prediction, specifically hurricane prediction, by conducting a pilot field experiment this August and September to investigate the roots of hurricane genesis and to demonstrate the driftsonde technology developed by EOL. This work was done in collaboration with CNES (the French Space Agency) during the T-AMMA (African Monsoon Multi-disciplinary Analysis) Campaign. In FY07, EOL will begin analysis of the data to investigate and improve the performance of the driftsonde as a research tool and to investigate hurricane genesis and the genesis environment. Areas of likely activity include the investigating why such a pronounced large-scale wave structure was found at the 20-km height of the balloon-gondola, but not in the operational analysis. Also we are interested in the specific differences between genesis and non-genesis regions over the tropical Atlantic and the impacts on genesis from air that advects into the tropics from the upper-troposphere in the middle latitudes.