Program Goals
The research and development of the Convective Weather Program are geared towards very short-term forecasting of high-impact weather. The objective is to enhance existing and facilitate new capabilities of monitoring (i.e., analysis), nowcasting (< 2 h), and forecasting (> 2 h) weather-related conditions that pose a hazard or threat to human safety, transportation on land, water, and in the air, and to infrastructure.
The program strives to advance a basic understanding of dynamic, thermodynamic, and microphysical processes related to severe weather, including the initiation of storms and their subsequent evolution, by focusing on observations, data assimilation, numerical modeling, forecasting, and diagnostic evaluation. Integration of short-term weather prediction with user applications is a high priority.
Challenge
High-resolution, short-term forecasts of thunderstorms provide critical information for a wide range of users, including the aviation community, ground transportation, urban emergency and water resources management groups, recreation facilities, construction industries, and the military, that assists them to safely and efficiently deploy resources. However, achieving reliable and accurate convective weather forecasts remains a scientific challenge due to uncertainty in grasping initial conditions, shortcomings in model physics and computational capabilities, and limitations of our understanding of how nature works. The forecast skill of observation-driven expert systems decreases rapidly with increasing lead-time, while numerical weather prediction models exhibit a limited forecast ability within the first few hours after initialization primarily due to spin-up problems. Furthermore, forecast methodology and display systems have to be tuned to the needs of different users—for example, a line of severe convective storms predicted in the wrong place may be perceived as a bad forecast from a water resources manager (e.g., dam operator), yet the same forecast might be quite good for an en-route air traffic control manager.
Project Sponsors:
The research and development activities of the Convective Weather Program are supported by both national and international sponsors, including:
Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) | Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) | National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) | National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) | National Science Foundation (NSF) | United States Navy
