Near Real-Time Verification At The Forecast Systems Laboratory: An Operational Perspective Michael P. Kay (CIRES/FSL/NOAA) Jennifer L. Mahoney (FSL/NOAA)

Background Aviation forecast verification project initiated in the early 1990s in the Aviation Division of Forecast Systems Laboratory Initial RTVS was created in Version was transferred to operational environment at the Aviation Weather Center (AWC). Real-time means 'as soon as possible' System has matured to support a diverse set of forecasts with an emphasis on aviation Fully-automated; runs 24/7 without human intervention

RTVS has an aviation focus but also includes other areas Supports numerous forecast types including human- generated, numerical models, and algorithms from both operational and experimental settings

Example session of a user generating a time series of Critical Success Index (CSI) for two different products for an arbitrary date range

Components of a Verification System Data Ingest Data Pre-processing Data Storage and Archive Analysis and Visualization Verification The actual comparison of forecast and observations

RTVS Architecture 10 node/20 CPU cluster Redundant ingest, scheduling, database, and web servers Currently process more than 10 Gb per day Online storage capacity of nearly 7 Tb Data Ingest Scheduler Computational Cluster Relational Database Web Interface

Challenges Meeting the needs of numerous user groups (forecasters, managers, etc.) Creating and implementing relevant scientific techniques Defining and meeting user requirements! (hardware and software) Is the project feasible? Understanding what information is relevant to present Displays (e.g., maps) are highly relevant in real-time Other tools may be more useful in longer-term settings Data management Training and documentation

Knowledge of hardware and software performance is crucial

Real-time displays that combine meaningful information

Summary and Future Directions www-ad.fsl.noaa.gov/fvb/rtvs/ Real-time verification is a challenging exercise requiring expertise in meteorology, statistics, software and hardware design Forecast verification is only one part of a verification system Numerous lessons learned over the last 10 years are factoring into a re-engineering effort to produce the next- generation RTVS