Verification of Weather Forecasts

Abstract

Verification of weather forecasts has been a controversial subject for more than sixty years and has affected nearly the entire field of meteorology. This paper will discuss some of the important reasons for this controversy and attempt to show that much of the existing confusion disappears when a careful analysis is made of the objectives of forecasting and verification. A number of verification systems that have been used will be described, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to make a complete survey of verification practices or of the literature on the subject. For the latter purpose the reader is referred to articles by Bleeker [1], Muller [6], and the U. S. Weather Bureau [10], which contain extensive bibliographies.