ECMWF | Reading | 11-14 September 2017
Ensemble prediction: past, present and future
Twenty-five years ago, both the ECMWF and the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) started producing global, medium-range ensemble forecasts as part of their operational suites. The implementation of these ensembles induced a paradigm shift in NWP from providing a single forecast, to issuing a range of forecasts that can be used to identify possible future scenarios, to compute the probability of events of interest, and in general to estimate forecast confidence levels. Today, ensembles are routinely used to provide estimates of the probability distributions of analyses and forecasts.
During the Seminar, we discussed whether the existing ensemble designs can continue to deliver improvements, or whether we need to re-consider their configurations. We revisited the main assumptions behind the different strategies used to simulate initial and model uncertainties, and assessed whether there is clear evidence that one approach should be preferred to another. We looked at how global and regional ensembles can complement each other, and whether different ensemble techniques should be used to estimate the initial or forecast state of the atmosphere. Sources and sinks of forecast skill were also discussed.
Seminar aims
The seminar is part of ECMWF's educational programme and is aimed at young scientists but also more established scientists that want to engage more with ensemble prediction.
Presentations and recordings
Monday 11 September
Tuesday 12 September
Wednesday 13 September
Thursday 14 September
Organising committee
Roberto Buizza, Martin Leutbecher, Anna Ghelli, Antje Weisheimer, Franco Molteni, Magdalena Alonso-Balmaseda, Sarah-Jane Lock, Tim Stockdale, Massimo Bonavita, David Richardson.