1. Meteorological applications and numerical models becoming increasingly accurate
Actual observing systems provide high resolution data in space and time
Allow to detect high impact weather
Nowcasting tools to forecast high impact weather well established and the most important component in the warning process
Research needed to replace “Warning on Detection” by “Warning on Forecast”
Convection permitting models and especially ensembles are a big step forward
Can give good indication of convective activity, heavy rain or high winds
But still not good enough for real warning operation
Short and medium range ensemble systems provide accurate and reliable forecasts
Early warning for winter storms, large scale flooding, extreme temperature events possible
The bulk of meteorological products can be created automatically
WWOSC, August 2014, Montreal

2. The role of the forecaster
No more product generation that could be created automatically without loss of quality
High impact weather remains the domain of the forecaster
Forecaster still in the loop for quite some time
Providing actual warnings and weather watches
Forecasters need to focus on where manual intervention is still needed
Forecasters need to constantly adapt to new data, applications and models (increased complexity, conceptual models, scientific understanding)
Technical system need to take care of final product generation and distribution
Forecasters work gets an additional focus
Providing advice (new products)
Supporting collaborative decision making(crisis mgmt., airports)
Forecasting advisor roles have already proven a highly effective means of communicating weather and its impacts to local government and civil protection authorities within the UK
Fundamentally, as the accuracy of NWP models has improved over the years, the opportunities to add value to the forecast have decreased. human forecaster is going to be left with two basic areas of forecast responsibility, in this vision of the future:
"Rescuing" the NWP forecast from huge errors.
Rare, severe event forecasting. Hazardous weather of all sorts will continue to be difficult for NWP to handle in detail since it will depend, in many cases, on things which the model cannot forecast at the level to which the atmosphere is sensitive
Human skills of pattern recognition and information processing should continue to be critical.
It will require better-educated, better-trained forecasters.
There is a significant probability that humans will be out of the forecasting loop, within 20 years. Part of this is due to a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of evaluation of forecasters by management. They may be looking, for budgetary or other reasons, to show that there is no value added by humans.
The second reason for taking humans out of the loop is that they may, in fact, not be adding important value often enough to justify their existence.
MeOffice: The cost of continued human intervention is often weak from cost/benefit perspective
New activities best performed by skilled forecasters:interpretation, decision making and communication (costumer facing expert advisory roles
it will not be a forecaster’s role to ‘add value’ by intervening on model data to achieve improvements in accuracy. These improvements should be achieved by developments in model performance and post-processing.
Semi-automation as an intermdeiate step to full automation
.Forecasters and advisors add the often vital level of interpretation required for some customers, informed by in-depth knowledge of their requirements. We must ensure that advisors have the skills and information available
to them to be able to give rapid, authoritative guidance to customers based on their changingcircumstances.
WWOSC, August 2014, Montreal

3. NMSs and the private sector
Let each partner do what they do best
Cooperate when it makes sense
Private sector can help to distribute warnings
But, don’t compromise official single voice!
Example: forecasts for renewable energy in Germany
DWD is optimizing its models including the usage of data from wind and solar parks
Met. Service providers optimize their power forecasts
WWOSC, August 2014, Montreal

4. Cooperation with academia
Germany established a (virtual) research network (Hans Ertel Center) to better link basic research and teaching with the needs of DWD
Focus onto the areas that are relevant to weather forecasting
Strengthening DWD’s subjects in the universities curricula
Establish permanent research groups in five priority research areas
Research Themes:
Dynamics and Predictability
Data Assimilation
Model Development
Climate Monitoring & Diagnostics
Use of weather forecasting for the general public
Call for proposal
3 funding phases
After 12 years research center should be abel to run without fnding by means of external research funds
The structural goal of the programme is to enable the building-up of a research network by awarding a four-year start-up financing with the aim that this network will begin to sustain itself by means of external research funds
WWOSC, August 2014, Montreal