Semi-automation facilities on Horace

The functionality of the Horace meteorological workstation system developed by the Met Office continues to increase. It is now a mature visualisation and production tool in operational use at:

· the National Meteorological Centre (NMC), Bracknell,

· the Defence Meteorological Centre (DMC), High Wycombe,

· the Royal Navy Fleet Weather and Oceanography Centre (FWOC), Northwood,

· the HQ of the United States Airforce in Europe (USAFE), Sembach, Germany, and

· the Thailand Meteorological Department (TMD), Bangkok, Thailand.

Further systems are in the process of being introduced on around 90 ships in the Royal Navy fleet, and also at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.

This paper will give an update of the Horace system and provide an overview of the range of facilities, both available and planned. In particular it will concentrate on developments to the range of semi-automation facilities, which provide 'first guess' forecasts to the users. The most challenging of these has been the application to produce an automated shipping forecast text. The software is now undergoing trials in the NMC, as is the first attempt at semi-automating the production of TAFs (Terminal Airfield Forecasts). Once a TAF has been issued, it is the forecaster's responsibility to monitor it against incoming observations to make sure it is still valid. A system has been developed (as part of a European-wide collaborative project) to carry out this task automatically. If the latest airfield observation is outside the range of the forecast in the TAF, then the forecaster is alerted to the fact that the TAF will need to be amended. Another recent development has been the implementation of an algorithm to derive frontal positions directly from NWP output, which was developed elsewhere in the Met Office. The forecaster is now able to display this first guess as a guide when deciding where to draw fronts on the forecast charts.