4A.5
Forecast Decision Support Environment - A Progress Report


The Grid Monitor presents a status of the current forecast as compared to gridded analyses of observations providing forecasters with the ability to quickly assess the forecast quality. �Indications of a good forecast tell forecasters that little or no updates are required, while forecasts that compare poorly to observational analyses may require additional attention. �The Short-term Update tool allows forecasters to define a set of models along with blending weights for each that can vary with time. �For example, high temporal- and spatial-resolution models may make up the earliest part of the forecast, with longer-term models making up the latter part. �Finally, the enhanced ensemble capabilities assists forecasters with tools that investigate ensemble information such as: spaghetti diagrams, temporal plumes, histogram sampling, and ensemble-relative frequency of user-defined events.
In addition to providing status of our current progress, we will present future plans including an improvement to the blending process employed by most forecasters now. �This new technique archives past model performance on a grid point by grid point basis and then uses that information to generate a model blended forecast, taking full advantage of the best-performing model at each grid point.