A new product to flag up the risk of cold spells in Europe weeks ahead
Ferranti, Laura ; Magnusson, Linus ; Vitart, Frédéric ; Richardson, David
Persistent severe cold temperatures pose serious threats to health and welfare. There is therefore a demand for the development of early warning systems that could allow more time for mitigating actions. In the medium range (up to ten days ahead), predictions of severe temperature conditions can be directly based on temperature forecast probabilities. As forecasts move beyond ten days, on the other hand, increasingly they cannot accurately represent day-to-day weather variability at individual grid points. They may, however, capture large-scale circulation patterns that last more than a week. Early indications of such patterns can help forecasters to identify the potential for temperature anomalies in the extended range. For this reason, ECMWF has developed a new product that visualises extended-range predictions for weather patterns in the Euro-Atlantic region associated with persistent cold spells in Europe. The predictions have been found to have useful skill up to about 2.5 weeks ahead.
Accès à la notice sur le site du portail documentaire de Météo-France