Weather forecasting : the next generation : the potential use and implementation of ensemble forecasting

This thesis discusses ensemble forecasting, a promising new weather forecasting technique, from various viewpoints relating not only to its meteorological aspects but also to its user and policy aspects. Ensemble forecasting was developed to overcome the limitations of conventional deterministic weather forecasting. However, despite the achievements of ensemble forecasting techniques and efforts to put them into operation, the implementation and utilization of ensemble forecasting seems limited in society. This thesis studies meteorological aspects, potential uses and value, and policy issues to give an overall picture of ensemble forecasting and suggests directions of measures to increase its utilization. Conventional weather forecasting cannot achieve perfect forecasts due to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere and imperfect analyses of the current atmosphere. The imperfect description of numerical weather prediction models in the forecasting process is another source of the disparity between forecasts and the real atmosphere. Conventional weather forecasting offers only a single scenario, which sometimes fails to predict the actual weather; ensemble forecasting provides probabilistic weather forecasts based on multiple weather scenarios.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Goto, Susumu

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• James A. Hansen and Kerry A. Emanuel.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40379

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40379