Weather forecasting:
A centenary perspective
Weather – December 2004, Vol. 59, No. 12
Alan J. Thorpe
University of Reading
It is the 100th anniversary in 2004 of the
publication of Vilhelm Bjerknes’ paper
that set the agenda for modern weather
forecasting based on scientific weather
prediction (Bjerknes 1904; see English
translation by Mintz 1999). Bjerknes
suggested that the laws and mathematical
equations of physics could be integrated
forward in time from initial conditions (the
diagnosis) to predict the future state of the
atmosphere (the prognosis). The boldness
of this vision is stunning – Bjerknes’
suggestion was made at a time when there
were no standardised routine observations,
no internationally agreed units, no
computers, and no established numerical
methods to solve the equations. The rest,
as they say, is history.
In this essay a view is given about what
might lie ahead for weather forecasting
using numerical weather prediction (NWP).
(The important role of human forecasters in
the production of the forecast is not dis-
cussed here only in the interests of brevity.)
This perspective has emerged from the
international science community as it has
been developing a new World
Meteorological Organization (WMO)
research programme. It provides what
seems to me to be a new way to think about
the forecast process that could be described
as something of a paradigm shift in meteor-
ology. All views expressed here are offered
to stimulate debate and they draw heavily
on ideas developed by many scientists who
are contributing to the development of a
new global atmospheric research pro-
gramme under WMO, called THORPEX – see
www.wmo.int/thorpex for further details.
THORPEX is a truly international research
programme that involves as many nations as
can contribute to, and/or benefit from,
improved high-impact weather forecasts. In
preparing this article, special thanks go to
Mel Shapiro who is co-chair, with me, of the
THORPEX International Scientific Steering
Committee and also to Lenny Smith, who
332
provided helpful comments on a draft of
this essay.
Process of weather forecasting
Let us try to summarise how weather predic-
tion is currently carried out. Observations of
the state of the atmosphere are made. These
are used, along with a short-range forecast
of this state, in a process called data assim-
ilation, to produce what is called the analy-
sis. The numerical forecast model, including
the data assimilation, incorporates a set of
numerical equations describing the physical
laws that govern the evolution of the atmos-
phere. The final ingredient that we need to
consider is the computer system on which
the NWP calculations are performed. The
totality of observations, analysis, model and
computer system are what, in a traditional
perspective, constitute the forecast system.
The production of the forecast is thus the
process of integrating the model forward in
time given the initial conditions as
described by the analysis.
The quality of a forecast can be assessed
by calculation of a measure of the forecast
error – the difference between the forecast
and the analysis at the forecast time (but
note that one can also attempt to evaluate
the forecast against the observations them-
selves). A way of summarising forecast skill
is to ask at which forecast lead-time (label
this as T) does a given measure of the fore-
cast error first achieve a threshold value. For
example, the forecast can be presumed to
have lost useful skill once the anomaly
correlation of the 500 mbar height surface
of the forecast and the verifying analysis falls
below a value of 60%. Of course other, more
complex, measures of forecast skill may be
more useful to assess the practical utility of
forecasts.
The change over the last decades of the
value of T as a summary of the skill of the
forecast system has become a key output
performance measure of the science of
meteorology. Using, as an illustration only,
the aforementioned anomaly correlation at
500 mbar for the Northern Hemisphere, in
1980 T was 5 days, in 2000 it was 7 days and
at the end of 2003 it was close to 8 days. An
overall average figure that is often quoted is
that forecast skill is improving at the rate of
1-day lead-time per decade, and in fact this
rate has noticeably increased in the last few
years. How has this progress been achieved?
To simplify substantially, the answer is by
making huge scientific and technological
improvements in understanding the atmos-
phere, observations, modelling and com-
puter power. Is the rate of improvement
slowing down? Not obviously. We have
every expectation that all components of
the system, even with only currently fore-
seen developments, will continue to
improve.
These skill improvements are truly
remarkable and they represent what is one
of the major scientific achievements of the
latter part of the last 100 years. Where will it
all end? Will we be able to eventually predict
the detailed weather a year in advance? This
leads us on to a further major scientific
achievement in our field and that is our
ability to predict, at least in an approximate
way, what is the so-called limit of pre-
dictability. We know because of chaos – the
butterfly effect – that the atmosphere
exhibits a dynamical sensitivity such that
predictions must lose skill at some point
in the future, and the current thinking is
that this limit might be about 14 days.
Research is still needed to be able to say
more precisely what this limit might be.
All components of the forecast system
have uncertainties associated with them
(and always will have). If we link the
existence of these uncertainties to the
idea of chaos, it means that forecasts made
using analyses and models within the
range of uncertainty will diverge, some-
times substantially, from one another
through the forecast period. The forecast
system therefore needs to be able to
describe a spread of possible outcomes.
Consequently, a number of forecast centres
are now producing an ensemble of forecasts
that differ because they start with slightly
different initial conditions or use slightly
different model formulations. This means
that some centres, such as the European
Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts (ECMWF), now have ensemble
prediction systems that can estimate not
only the most likely outcome but also
the risk that meteorological conditions will
differ from the most likely ones.
Despite recent accelerations in the
improvement in forecast skill, it must be the
case that in the longer term this rate of
improvement will slow down. The maximum
skill achievable is sometimes known as the
potential predictability and we know that
it must be the case that forecast skill will
eventually slow down as we approach the
potential predictability limit. Note that
average attributes of the atmosphere such
as weekly or monthly averages are certainly
predictable over longer time-ranges than
those being discussed here for the detailed
state of the atmosphere that we call the
weather.
Therefore, even though we are not there
yet, we know that we will get to a time of
diminishing returns for the scientific effort
put in. At the moment we can, and do,
certainly argue persuasively that we cannot
predict, say, rainfall as well as 500 mbar
height. However, most people probably do
not really doubt that even precipitation
forecasting will improve, perhaps sooner
rather than later. At some hypothetical point
in the future, meteorological science is
arguably close to being over as we will not
be able to do any better. Funders may not
support further research and meteorolog-
ical services might not be paid to develop
their forecast systems any further!
Extra ingredient – the users
This perspective on weather forecasting
misses a vital extra ingredient. Where are the
people in the process? Of course people
(specialists) create the improvements in the
forecast system and they are critical to the
forecast improvement process, but we are
talking about the people – a term used here
to mean many aspects of society and the
economy, including the natural environ-
ment – that ‘use’ the forecast. They are often
called the users, or customers if you think in
market terms. Thus far in our discussion the
users are perceived as a passive entity at
the end of the chain. The fact that they
are not really passive changes the whole
story. The users need forecasts not of
meteorological variables as described in
numerical models but of derived quantities
that depend not only on those variables
but also on a multiplicity of other factors
external to meteorology. An example of a
derived quantity for an electricity supplier is
electricity demand, which depends not only
on weather but also on other factors.
In fact, meteorological services are
getting wise to this step in the forecast
process and we hear nowadays about value-
added services for the users/customers.
More generally, business processes such as
sales and marketing come in also. Even
the so-called public weather forecast needs
this step because the forecast model output
is in terms of quantities that we label
temperature, wind etc., but which are not
actually things we can measure with ther-
mometers or anemometers. The external
factor in that case is the complex (nonlinear)
transfer function that translates the coarse-
grain model world into the real world. This is
sometimes called model output statistics,
but that is to diminish its significance and
complexity. Let us just recap on the overall
forecast process as described thus far: first
we take observations, second we create an
analysis, third we calculate a forecast, and
fourth we develop the user products/
services.
However, it is not really the existence of
this final-users’ step that transforms our
thinking about the process. What is be-
coming clear is that we are in a position to
alter the whole forecast system depending
on the precise requirements of a given user
or set of users. We can call this an interactive
forecast system. We will describe some of the
many ways in which this can be done but
the upshot is that information flows
between all the components of the system –
before the final forecast/user product is
created. The information modifies all the
components of the forecast system as a
result of the prescribed requirements of the
user. The linear chain of command from
observations to users, described above, is
broken and the system becomes truly
responsive to the user needs.
High-impact weather forecasts
A hint as to the emergence of these new
ideas is the increasing use these days of the
phrase ‘high-impact weather’ (and climate).
The term high-impact weather delineates
those weather events that encompass
extreme, severe or hazardous events, e.g.
hurricane force winds and heavy rainfall
leading to flooding. However, it is actually
the weather forecasts and their role in
mitigating the impacts of weather events on
society and the economy that is our
business. Many high-impact weather events
will exert their impacts regardless of the
weather forecast and also some, if not many,
may already be very well forecast. So, in fact,
it is high-impact weather forecasts that we
are interested in; these are weather forecasts
that have a high impact on society and the
economy. Often high-impact weather fore-
casts are related to forecasts of modest or
ordinary weather. For example, a fall of just
1 degC in UK temperatures increases UK
electricity demand by more than 200 MW –
a skilful forecast of such an increase in
demand can save electricity suppliers a
considerable amount. This is a radical shift
of thinking. High-impact weather is, of
course, an important and interesting
natural phenomenon that affects society
Weather forecasting
substantially, but it is high-impact weather
forecasts that help people to overcome the
detrimental effects, and utilise the beneficial
effects, of weather. We should, therefore,
move away from quoting the importance of
weather to society in terms of billions of
Euros from wind damage or floods, which is
of course valid but not much, if anything, to
do with meteorology as such, to quantifying
Weather – December 2004, Vol. 59, No. 12
what the true value of weather forecasts
themselves are to society.
The human consequences of the natural
environment have led the United Nations
and the WMO, amongst others, to have
various initiatives in natural disaster
reduction. The disasters that are being
referred to are the societal/economic
impacts of natural environmental hazards
(and not the hazards themselves), and their
reduction can be substantially contributed
to by improved weather forecasts. If we
accept the idea of the primacy of high-
impact weather forecasts, it changes the
agenda from imagining that the key forecast
challenge is how to predict, per se, rare or
extreme or hazardous events (which, in any
case, is difficult to imagine how to do) to
thinking about how to improve forecasts of
events that affect users most (which may be
much more possible). This is an example of
what was referred to earlier as the liberating
features of this perspective. We are not say-
ing that weather hazards are not of concern,
but rather it is that subset of hazardous
weather associated with forecasts that have
significance and value to users that matters.
Furthermore, from the point of view of the
progress of the science, it is the subset (of
that subset) of forecasts that can be
improved substantially that really sets our
future research and development agenda.
As a profession we are probably not in as
good a position as we should be in
identifying this resulting subset. Trying
harder to make this identification will open
up a whole new set of scientific research
problems to be solved.
Interactive forecast systems
In which ways can we imagine the new fore-
casting system as being truly interactive?
Much of the potential for interactivity
relies on being able to calculate, from a
preliminary or ‘test forecast’, what can be
called sensitive perturbations. These are,
often small, changes to the modelled
atmospheric state that have prescribed
properties; such as, that they grow in
magnitude significantly during the forecast.
333
 These sensitive perturbations can be used in
a variety of ways to alter the whole forecast-
ing system. They are being used, even now,
to provide the range of initial conditions
necessary to produce an ensemble of
forecasts that differ because they start
Weather forecasting
with slightly different initial conditions.
Sensitive perturbations can also be used to
define localised sensitive regions in the
atmosphere that vary in location from day
to day with the atmospheric flow. Sensitive
regions are places in the atmosphere where
if there are small errors in the analysis these
will grow substantially to create large
forecast errors. A critical facet of sensitive
Weather – December 2004, Vol. 59, No. 12
perturbations is that they are different for
every meteorological situation.
The structure of these sensitive perturba-
tions is calculated in the following schematic
way. We can take our knowledge of the user
requirements for the forecast to specify a
user-defined location within which a certain
user-defined attribute of the forecast over a
user-defined time-range needs to be as
accurate as possible. As an example we
could choose the UK as the location and the
two-day forecast of surface pressure as the
attribute (although few non-academic users
would worry about such a quantity!). It is
possible to calculate, using an NWP forecast
model, the sensitive perturbations uniquely
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associated with these particular user-
defined aspects of the forecast. These
perturbations will, for example, develop
most rapidly over the given forecast
time-range. This knowledge opens up a
wide range of ways in which the forecast
system can be made interactive and the
subsequent forecast be optimised for that
particular user.
This approach is already used by ECMWF
to generate the initial perturbations for their
ensemble system. However, in their case,
currently, the user-defined location is most
of the Northern Hemisphere and the time-
period over which the perturbations are
calculated is fixed at 48 hours. To have these
aspects more specifically user-defined
would mean that the ensemble forecast
produced from such targeted initial cond-
itions would be, in some senses, targeted
and thereby optimised for that use.
Research on this approach has been carried
out using north-west Europe as the user-
defined location; so this is one way in which
interactivity can be introduced.
The perturbations that are calculated
from the test forecast are, at the initial time
of the forecast, located in relatively localised
regions. These are the sensitive regions
where, if there is a significant analysis error
located there, the error will grow rapidly to
create a significant forecast error. These
sensitive zones are therefore places where it
would be particularly advantageous to have
the best possible analysis. An alteration to
the analysis in sensitive regions could be
made in two ways. The first is to alter (i.e.
improve) the observational coverage there,
and the second is to use the information
about that region’s sensitivity to improve
the way that observations are used there in
the data assimilation system. The former
approach involves targeting additional
observations into sensitive regions whilst
the latter is called adaptive data assimilation.
The scientific opportunities to develop the
methodologies of interactivity are both
challenging and exciting and involve basic
science.
How can we create additional observations
in sensitive zones? There are many ways
available now and more we can conceive of
for future deployment. Instrumented air-
craft can fly to sensitive regions and release
dropsondes to profile the atmosphere there.
High-altitude balloons are being developed
that could drift in the upper winds at, say,
100 mbar and from which dropsondes can
be released when they pass over sensitive
regions – the driftsonde. Satellites can be
operated (and indeed they can be moved)
with rapid scans for short periods when they
are over sensitive regions. Unmanned
autonomous vehicles, such as the aero-
sonde, can be remotely piloted to sensitive
regions to collect measurements. Com-
mercial aircraft flight-level meteorological
measurements can be reported more
frequently in sensitive regions. Radiosondes
launched from merchant ships can be
deployed more frequently when the ship
enters such zones. Research experiments in
estimating the forecast skill improvements
resulting from such a targeting of observ-
ations have been carried out starting with
the Fronts and Atlantic Storm-Track
EXperiment in 1997, followed by other simi-
lar campaigns including, most recently, one
in the North Atlantic between mid-October
and mid-December 2003.
All these options for obtaining additional
observations are possible now and priorities
as to which to use could be made on the
basis of their cost relative to the information
generated. Given limited resources, however,
the idea of targeting the observing system
leads to a possible unintended conse-
quence, which must be avoided. There
must be a good observing system in place
such that the test forecast, used to calculate
sensitive perturbations, is accurate enough
that the predicted sensitive zones are
indeed in about the right place. Redesign
of the global observing system must not
mean that the fixed or non-adaptive
component is reduced and certainly not to a
point which compromises the quality of the
test forecast(s). There is pressure to better
utilise the existing radiosonde network, for
example, by reducing coverage in some
areas and increasing it in other more
critical regions. Targeting methodologies
should help that process but subject to the
overall quality constraint outlined here. It is
user-designed and user-specific forecasts.
Even computer power may be targeted in
future if, as expected, grid (distributed)
computing allows more flexibility in the
availability of such power. Rather than
produce a single definitive forecast to be
weather forecast wherever on the planet
and whenever it occurs. This could be
thought of as a form of international aid as
the highest-impact weather forecasts can
affect the least-developed countries, which
are unable on their own to command the

simply not possible to determine the best
targets for tomorrow without very good
observations for today.
The use of observations in the data
assimilation system can be modified to take
into account the location of sensitive
regions. For example, currently, not all
the available satellite measurements are
used operationally, simply because of
interpreted by many users, we will be
producing many different forecasts – one for
each user.
All this certainly sounds user-driven, but
what about the public weather forecast
where in some senses one is forecasting for
a generic user often with an eye to weather
warnings? Again, there is nothing to stop
meteorological services from tailoring a
Weather forecasting
resources needed to produce such specific
forecasts for themselves.
Reference
Bjerknes, V. (1904) Das Problem der
Wettervorhersage, betrachtet vom
Standpunkte der Mechanik und der
Phyisik. Meteorol. Z., 21, pp. 1–7 (English
translation by Mintz, Y. (1999) “The

Weather – December 2004, Vol. 59, No. 12

computational constraints. Therefore, the
satellite observations are thinned either by
geographical area or by channel weighting.
Exploiting knowledge of the location of
sensitive regions would allow a superior
selection process. Another example is that
observations can be used such that their
influence is spread depending on the local
dynamics of the atmosphere in that region.
Yet another example is that large differences
in the observations and the first-guess
forecast in sensitive regions could lead to
the consequent analysis being weighted
more heavily in favour of the observations
there.
In a world with ample computer time
available, each user would be able to have
forecast for that group. This brings us back
to the domain of the reduction of weather
disasters. A further dream we might have is
to put in place a new global centre that
produces a forecast specific to the most
serious weather that is forecast wherever it
might occur. The way one could do this is to
create an ensemble-of-ensembles that
collects together all the ensembles
produced by different global NWP systems. It
would be, in effect, a grand ensemble, which
would be a multi-analysis and
multi-model ensemble, produced in a
multinational way. The targeting of
additional observations, for example, could
be done to optimise the forecast from such
a grand ensemble for the highest-impact
problem of weather forecasting as a
problem in mechanics and physics”, In:
Shapiro, M. A. and Grønås, S. The life cycles
of extratropical cyclones, American
Meteorological Society, pp. 1–4)
Correspondence to: Prof. A. J. Thorpe,
NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science,
Department of Meteorology,
University of Reading, Earley Gate,
PO Box 243, Reading RG6 6BB.
e-mail: a.j.thorpe@reading.ac.uk
doi: 10.1256/wea.87.04
© Royal Meteorological Society, 2004.

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