{"id":3396,"date":"2020-07-16T12:31:10","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T12:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weatherimpact.com\/?page_id=3396"},"modified":"2022-06-09T11:49:25","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T11:49:25","slug":"improvement-of-our-precipitation-forecasts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.weatherimpact.com\/services\/agro-meteorological-forecasts\/improvement-of-our-precipitation-forecasts\/","title":{"rendered":"Improvement of our precipitation forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"
At Weather Impact, we are continuously improving our weather forecasts. We have recently combined the ECMWF ensemble and high-resolution forecasts in order to deliver a new combined forecast with best features of both products. The ensemble forecast has a spatial resolution of 18 km, which is too coarse to resolve small-scale precipitation patterns, however it does contain a range of future weather possibilities. The high-resolution simulation (9 km resolution) is generally of higher quality than the ensemble forecast but it only contains 1 possible outcome of future weather. It can therefore not be used to define a likelihood for events to occur. Combining the ensemble and high-resolution forecasts results in a forecast at 9 km resolution with its corresponding likelihood. This concept is unique for weather forecasts, especially in Africa.<\/p>\n
In the figures below the effect of grid resolution between the ensemble and high-resolution forecasts is shown. Also the precipitation sums for March 2019 are shown, as well the difference between the new product and ensemble forecast for that specific month. Interesting is that the combined product projects less precipitation for almost all regions, indicating the traditional ensemble forecast might overestimates precipitation for Burundi.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Left panel: The ensemble and high-resolution model grid with its topography for Burundi. The white outlines indicate the coarse resolution grid and the chess-coloured panels the high-resolution grid. Middle panel: Precipitation sums for March 2019 for the ensemble forecast and right panel: The difference in precipitation sum between the combined product and ensemble forecast. <\/em><\/p>\nValidation<\/span><\/h2>\n