Seminar 4th June 2010 10:30 a.m. B53/Level 4 seminar room
Ensemble Prediction System for Meteorology
Prof Geerd-Rüdiger Hoffmann
National meteorological service of Germany (Deutscher Wetterdienst)
- Categories
- CFD, Climate, Complex Systems, e-Research, Earth Observation, HPC, Scientific Computing
- Submitter
- Hans Fangohr
Geerd-Rüdiger Hoffmann
Abstract
The various sources of potential errors for weather forecasting, like insufficient accuracy of initial weather conditions, inaccuracies due to grid sizes and algorithmic shortcomings, lead to results with some embedded uncertainties. Because of the chaotic nature of the atmosphere, a small variation in the input due to errors may result in a completely different weather prediction. In recent years, therefore, major weather centres have started to investigate ways how to measure the variability included in a deterministic forecast. For this purpose, a number of forecasts for the same time period are identified with slightly different input parameters which are still realistic within the known error boundaries. The resulting ensemble prediction systems (EPS) differ in the method used to identify the variation in the input parameters and the number of forecasts run in parallel. The presentation will provide an overview of the scientific background for EPS and a review of the present status, including some examples.
The speaker
Board member of the national weather service of Germany (DWD); has been in charge of technical infrastructure and operation there since 2004
Head of the department “Systems and Operation” of DWD from 1997 to 2003; from 1980 to 1997 head of the Computing Centre of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (UK); Fellow of the Data Handling Division of CERN (CH) from 1978 to 1980; from 1972 to 1978 Academic Councillor and head of the Computer Systems Division of the Information Processing Centre at Tübingen University; from 1979 to 1972 Senior Systems Analyst at the Information Processing Centre of Tübingen University; other positions: former member of the Council of RARE and the Steering Group of the European Consultative Forum for Research Networking (ECFRN), since 1981 member of ALWR and later ZKI, from 1995 to 2000 Member of the Board of Directors of DANTE Ltd. ( Delivering Advanced Networking Technology to Europe); since 1992 Visiting Professor at Southampton University and Chairman of the UNICORE Forum e.V.