Applications Of Meteo Service Statistical Forecast Technology

For more then 10 years Meteo Service has developed standard MOS systems for meteorologic purposes based on ground based observation data and numerical model output. Beside our own operational standard system MSwr-MOS we already have implemented similar customized systems together with our customers, using numerical model data from GFS, ECMWF, GME, HIRLAM and UKMO models.

Meteo Service did successful research with integrating full area remote sensing data in our MOS systems. A joined project on this topic was started in 2002 together with the German Weather Service, and in 2004 we finally installed a MOS system for predicting the radar image at the German Weather Service, which is in operational service up to today.

River gages are highly dependent on meteorological impacts. For this reason there is no long way from meteorologic standard MOS to systems that can provide statistically optimized gage predicitions. Meteo Service has already successfully installed such prototypes for scientific research.

MOS technology is an excellent tool for producing wind forecasts, particularly for projects concerning wind power plants or other wind dependent industry.

The general aviation is highly dependent on automatic weather forecasting systems. With the Auto-TAF, Meteo Service has installed a system that computes airport weather forecasts automatically and produces special encoded messages (TAFs) from that data. Currently, Auto-TAF is widely used by several national weather services and aviation companies.

Today lightning detection data play an important role in general thunderstorm prediction. Be it the warning system by national weather services, be it the general aviation or be it the power supplying industry, all of them need very accurate predictions of the occurrence of thunderstorms. With lightning MOS systems, Meteo Service has a tool for producing this kind of product. A first system was developed in 2001 and was implemented at the German Weather Service for operational service. Up to today this system is used for warning decision making and for the aviation.

MOS is also capable of producing excellent forecasts based on moving objects like ships or thunderstorm cells. The latter one is a promising approach to apply MOS on thunderstorm forecasting and warning decision process. The Cell-MOS provides the possibility to produce statistically optimized forecasts of the track and the individual properties of single thunderstorm cells. The goal of this development and research is providing a thunderstorm warning system that can provide individual information for counties and cities/small locations. As a result the meteorologist working at the warning desk is supported by guidances for every current thunderstorm cell. Therefore the warning decisions can be made much more detailed in time and region.

Meteo Service has expanded the classic imagination of ground based MOS systems into the third dimension of the atmosphere, and integrated three-dimensional observation data into the statistical technology. The main goal of this research was the prediction of radiosonde data and the expansion of MOS to continuous three-dimensional forecast fields similar to the fields generated by the numerical models. A first project was realized successfully in context to rocket launches, other applications for aviation or space flights are thought about.