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Why Your Local Weather Forecast Is Going To Get Better

edited June 2019 in Off-Topic
Following are selected excerpts from a current NPR article. They have been heavily edited in the interest of brevity.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that it has upgraded its main weather forecasting model, called the Global Forecast System.

"Virtually any aspect of the weather forecast — whether it is temperature or precipitation — will see overall improvement with this upgrade". NOAA scientists say the new system will also be better at predicting major weather events such as hurricanes by more accurately predicting a storm's path and intensity.

NOAA's Global Forecast System is getting a new engine, or "dynamical core". And it's been a very long time since they changed that engine: "[This] marks the first major upgrade to the GFS dynamical core in nearly 40 years," acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs told reporters.

There's been broad agreement that the U.S. weather forecasting system needed an upgrade. Over the years, the National Weather Service has fallen behind its European counterparts in the accuracy of its forecasts. That was particularly apparent in the lead-up to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The European model was the first to accurately predict that Sandy, rather than hooking out to sea, would actually strike the U.S..

NOAA has been running the new engine for the past three years of weather to compare its forecasting power to the older model. The improved accuracy is clear. For example, during the powerful winter storm in January 2018 that became known as a "bomb cyclone," the model in use at the time indicated a much lighter day of snowfall in the upper Northeast U.S. than what actually happened. The updated model was more accurate — it showed heavy snowfall.

The old model inaccurately predicted "extreme strengthening" of Hurricane Florence last year, while the updated model was much more accurate at predicting its path and intensity. The old model will continue to run in parallel through September to compare the predictions. The information supplied by the new forecast model will be used in local forecasts across the United States.

There's also another reason the forecasts are expected to improve. Over the past several years, NASA has been launching new satellites that collect "advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth's weather."

Comments

  • TedTed
    edited June 2019
    @MFO Members: Why couldn't we just read the NPR article ? It's only about five hundred words and it's unnecessary give us selected excerpts. The weather forecast can't get any better than this !
    Regards,
    Ted
  • edited June 2019
    @Ted: I encourage you to read the entire article- the link is right there in front of you!

    Note that unlike your unaccredited link remarks (amounting to plagiarism) I give full credit to the actual source of the information. You might consider that courtesy to your sources.

    Regarding "it's unnecessary give us selected excerpts" in your note above it might improve your post to consider using standard English instead of your usual bastardized version.

    Regards-
    OJ
  • TedTed
    edited June 2019
    You idiot, I did read the article !
  • Congratulations! Glad to hear that you haven't totally lost it.
  • Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it, eh? Mid-June in southern New England, and the HEAT just came on. This is shit. Where's SUMMER???!!!
  • Where's SUMMER???!!!

    Damned if I know. Maybe check with Trump's environmental crew? Probably nothing to do with global environmental imbalances though, since Trump considers all that stuff to be fake news. Good luck!
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