Communicating Risks and Impacts of Probabilistic Precipitation Forecasts and River Stage

Changes in precipitation due to a warming world can already be seen globally, but the timing, scale, and seasonality of these changes is uncertain and variable. Changes in precipitation have a number of implications, and forecasting these changes is becoming more important for decision makers and the public. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, Colorado has built a number of interactive mapping systems to communicate precipitation forecasts to be used in East Africa’s rapidly expanding irrigated agriculture and hydropower systems, and for flood forecasting for the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins.

The precipitation displays are interactive Geographic Information System (GIS) web mapping applications. The framework for these web displays integrates spatial and temporal information in one application using maps and graphs to facilitate communication of scientific information to the general public and policy makers. The applications were developed using open source technology and an extensible framework that is easily reproducible for different study areas.

The interactive nature of the web applications is the power behind these precipitation forecasting systems. Users choose what data they wish to visualize by stepping through selection options, such as type of data products (forecast or satellite), temporal averaging periods (24-hour, 5-day, 1-month, and 3-month totals), forecast date, and weather center. The displays allow for users to easily change selections to better understand the uncertainty and potential for precipitation for their region of interest. This talk will focus on our precipitation displays and the applications deployment to Amazon Web Services (AWS). We will also discuss how these precipitation displays are helping decisions makers better understand precipitation forecasts relevant for their areas of interest.