Overcoming the Fear of Losing Scientific Expertise in Effective Messaging

Over the past decade, the National Weather Service (NWS) Central Region (CR) and its forecast offices have been moving together to migrate forecasters away from direct, intensive grid editing to support Decision Support Services (DSS) communication, through initiatives such as the CR Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) Roadmap. A major cultural concern in this process is that forecasters fear losing the scientific knowledge that comes from in-depth analysis of the environment and numerical weather prediction output that supports grid editing. However, this is a myth. To effectively message the forecast and any hazards that affect core partners, forecasters need both a thorough understanding of meteorology, its conceptual models and the latest advances in the science, as well as a robust ability to interpret statistical information. To increase growth in these two areas, CR has provided: 1) science-sharing presentations during significant events that explore new tools (e.g., Ensemble Situational Awareness Table, derived High Resolution Ensemble Forecast fields, and percentile information from the National Blend of Models), 2) a tool in the Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) named ModelCertainty that can display a variety of statistics, 3) a GFE tool named HazardBuilder which supports the Graphical Hazardous Weather Outlook and helps forecasters determine where to target further forecast investigation. This emphasis of science, probabilistic information and tools is a core pillar of the next CR WRN Roadmap. The presentation will dive into these tools CR has provided, how they encourage good science and how they can help forecasters better effectively message the forecast.