Development of probabilistic forecasts of cumulonimbus clouds for the Aviation Industry

Oral Presentation 

Lightning, hail, severe turbulence and severe icing associated with cumulonimbus clouds present a significant safety hazard to air traffic and can impact the comfort and timeliness of a flight. The World Area Forecast System (WAFS) facilitates safe and efficient air navigation by providing global forecasts of key meteorological hazards, including cumulonimbus clouds. The Met Office is one of two global centres responsible for the provision of the meteorological information available under WAFS. 

The next generation of the World Area Forecast System (WAFS) will provide global probabilistic forecasts of such hazards, including forecasts of cumulonimbus clouds, from 2027. EPOCH (Ensemble Prediction of Convective Hazards) is a post-processing technique to generate probabilistic forecasts of cumulonimbus clouds from global model ensembles. 

An implementation of EPOCH is being developed at the Met Office for the next generation of WAFS. These forecasts are produced using output from the global ensembles run at the Met Office and ECMWF. Verification and calibration of these forecasts can be achieved by using global satellite derived observations of severe cumulonimbus clouds. Work is underway to calibrate EPOCH to produce more reliable probabilistic forecasts without losing too much resolution. This talk will introduce the EPOCH forecast product and outline the current methods used to calibrate the forecasts.