A low-cost post-processing technique improves weather forecasts around the world

Abstract

Computer-generated weather forecasts divide the Earth’s surface into gridboxes, each currently spanning about 400 km2, and predict one value per gridbox. If weather varies markedly within a gridbox, forecasts for specific sites inevitably fail. Here we present a statistical post-processing method for ensemble forecasts that accounts for the degree of variation within each gridbox, bias on the gridbox scale, and the weather dependence of each. When applying this post-processing, skill improves substantially across the globe; for extreme rainfall, for example, useful forecasts extend 5 days ahead, compared to less than 1 day without post-processing. Skill improvements are attributed to creation of huge calibration datasets by aggregating, globally rather than locally, forecast-observation differences wherever and whenever the observed “weather type” was similar. A strong focus on meteorological understanding also contributes. We suggest that applications for our methodology include improved flash flood warnings, physics-related insights into model weaknesses and global pointwise re-analyses.