Forecasters learn more about new forecast techniques

Forecasters from over 60 National Weather Service offices, including Alaska and Guam, poured into a classroom at NOAA's David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder in early May, anxious to learn more about a suite of revolutionary new forecast tools that fundamentally change the way they make forecasts. Developed at the Forecast Systems Laboratory in Boulder, the Graphical Forecast Editing Suite (GFESuite) asks forecasters to think outside the box in a big way, totally changing the way they develop their forecasts.

"Currently, forecasters describe the forecast in terms of words," says research meteorologist Tom LeFebvre. "Partly cloudy, chance of rain, high in the 50's. But in this new, digital era, they will describe the forecast in terms of numbers."

For instance, today if you were a forecaster making a weather forecast, you would look at the available guidance such as observations, satellite images, radar images, model data, and then mentally put together a forecast. According to LeFebvre, "The forecasters spend a lot of time typing the various types of forecasts and updating them. With the new system, they sit down at the computer, take the model guidance, run it through an algorithm that will calculate the various meteorological parameters, and then add their individual knowledge of the terrain and the local forecast situation into the mix and make a graphical forecast." Thus, the GFE permits the forecaster to insert his specialized knowledge of weather conditions in his area into the forecast and to draw or edit the image on the computer. This graphical forecast can then be displayed as both a text forecast and a graphic.

"This permits the forecaster to put much more detail in his forecast than was ever possible before," says LeFebvre.

Mark Mathewson, Chief of the Enhanced Forecaster Tools Branch in the Modernization Division at FSL, says GFE is part of a larger project, the Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS). "The IFPS method of forecasting has great benefits for the forecaster. The process is the same but as the mental composite of the forecast is jelling, the meteorologist enters this mental "picture" into the computer in digital form. For example, temperature values can be "painted," with each temperature range represented by a different color on a geographical map. Since the forecast is in digital form, the generation of forecast products is automated and can be of virtually any format and resolution." Mathewson says this system permits the forecaster to spend more time doing meteorology instead of typing.

According to Mathewson, all 120 NWS offices have some version of the software. About 30 offices are using it on a regular basis to produce new gridded forecast products. "By summer, every office will have the latest software. And by September of 2003, every office will be producing these grids."

While this new system may make forecasts more precise, it won't necessarily make life easier for the forecaster. "It's a bigger paradigm shift than switching from typewriters to computers," says LeFebvre. "It's more like taking a novelist who's used to expressing his ideas in words and making him an artist and saying ‘I'm taking away your computer now, and I'm giving you some paint and brushes and I want you to draw your ideas.' For some of the forecasters, it's an easy transition, but others find it much more difficult."

For forecaster Lynn Maximuk, the Meteorologist-in-Charge in Pleasant Hill, Mo., however, the transition has been a positive experience. "Our forecasters actually like it. The biggest advantage is it allows the forecasters to convey more of the information to the customers than they did in the past. I think the level of accuracy is about the same, but we can provide more detail."

Maximuk says that forecasting skill in his office has increased. "One of the biggest benefits of the GFE gridded forecast is, I think, this brings the Weather Service into the new world of information technology. The internet has changed the world. People want to know everything when they want it. By using a gridded forecast that we keep up-to-date all the time, we're able to meet that need. Customers can come in at their convenience, get the data they want, formatted any way they want and get however many parameters they want. They're not just limited to clouds, wind and temperature like we used to do with the text products."

According to Mathewson this was the second of three training sessions. "The goal is to get one person from every forecast office in the country trained. The next session will be in September."