Models, forecasters, and Interactive Forecast Preparation in the new millennium

The National Weather Service (NWS) has been developing and testing techniques that support Interactive Forecast Preparation (IFP) for more than a decade. The concept of IFP is key to achieving modernized forecast operations at Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) using the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS). With IFP, forecasters employ a family of techniques to prepare forecasts of weather elements in a common digital database from which many forecast products can be automatically composed and formatted. This allows the forecaster to concentrate on the meteorological situation and spend less time typing numerous products for dissemination. The common digital database used to generate these products also allows for more consistent forecasts over time and among products, and for easier monitoring and maintenance of those forecasts.

As IFP techniques have been developed and tested, the NWS Environmental Modeling Center has continued to realize steady improvement in both the quality and resolution of numerical forecast guidance available to WFO forecasters via AWIPS. In the new millennium, observation systems, data assimilation techniques, computer power, and model physics are certain to improve. However, most IFP tools used by forecasters today rely primarily on data entry and drawing techniques. They do not fully benefit from the availability of improved high-resolution model guidance.

Beginning in 2000, the NWS will introduce IFP into its Weather Forecast Office operations nationwide. At the same time, the NWS is establishing rapid prototype sites at a handful of offices across the nation. IFP prototype sites will focus on the development of new techniques to prepare forecast grids, new forecast methodologies, and new forecast products which can be generated from a digital forecast database. This paper describes current and future IFP tools designed to enable forecasters to take better advantage of advances in numerical model guidance.