Use of forecast departures in verification against observations
Dahoui, Mohamed ; Radnoti, Gabor ; Healy, Sean ; Isaksen, Lars ; Haiden, Thomas
Forecast users need to know how well ECMWF forecasts predict the actual observed conditions. Recent work makes it possible to assess the performance of our forecasts through detailed and accurate comparisons against all available observations. The forecast verification has thus been extended to incorporate all the observations used and quality-controlled by the data assimilation system (4DVAR).
Forecast verification is routinely performed against a subset of observations: radiosondes, SYNOP stations and buoy data for upper air, near-surface and wave forecasts, respectively. These observations provide independent verification, but they lack temporal and spatial coverage, leading to sampling issues. Extending the verification to other observation types, GPS radio occultation (GPS-RO) data for example, is very useful where the coverage of radiosondes is insufficient.
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