Thursday, 15 January 2004: 11:30 AM
Operational issues with a national digital forecast database
Room 6A
Digital forecast databases offer myriad opportunities and challenges: they are forecast engines capable of producing instant forecasts for any and all spots in areas they cover. The National Weather Service implemented its National Digital Forecast Database last year. They encountered some of the same challenges AccuWeather has been addressing since introducing its digital forecast engine in the mid 1990s. Key issues include: how to resolve forecaster and forecast office differences to serve adjacent areas, ingestion of numerical model data using model accuracy metrics, real time incorporation of severe weather tracking/forecasting in the digital system, and the minimization of forecast meaning degradation as the digital product is converted to words intended to help people make weather-related decisions.
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