Proactive Response to Forecasts of Natural Disasters: The Role of Ensemble Prediction.

It is frustrating to hear that emergency relief has only got to the victims of some weather disaster, days after the event has hit. We now have high quality probabilistic forecasts on the 2-week timescale which should in principle allow emergency services decide when to take proactive measures (e.g. based on pre-defined probability thresholds). These forecasts will only get better as global ensemble models move towards 5km grids in the first half of the next decade. This raises the important question of the future role of developing country met services in both embracing these 2-week high-res ensemble forecasts as a central part of their operational routine, and also adding value to them (though statistical probabilistic calibration, dialogue with users to develop probabilistic decision strategies, and dynamical downscaling).