Advancing the Forecast Enterprise

Dr. Louis W. Uccellini presented a Maniac Talk on September 12, 2012 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Abstract:Over the past 20 years, the entire weather enterprise has made revolutionary advances in the prediction of weather.  Remarkably, even greater progress has been made in the prediction of extreme weather events out to 7 days in advance (in some cases).  In this presentation, Dr. Louis W. Uccellini, Director of the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, will review the advancements that have been made in the prediction of extreme events.  He will then trace the revolutionary transformation of forecasting from a subjective “art” in the 1940’s to the applied physical science that it is today.  Today’s forecast process is based on 1) an integrated global observing system, 2) numerical weather prediction models and 3) the world’s fastest computers.  He will also describe how climate, weather and water predictions arebeing linked to decision makers, including the emergency management and water resource communities.  The linkage of these developments to an improved “Research to Operations” (R2O) transition process will be highlighted in this presentation including some recent developments in accelerating the use of satellite data in advanced numerical models involving the Goddard Space Flight Center.  The talk will conclude with a discussion of what is (and is not) working as this larger climate, weather, and water enterprise is attempting to improve the R2O process and accelerating the transition of research, observations and technology advancements into operations.