WMO Games research advances weather prediction

Anyone spending time in the mountains knows that one moment it can be blazing sunshine and the next, you're unknowingly headed towards the cliff edge in a white out.

For meteorologists, the accurate prediction of winter weather in a place such as Whistler, Canada is complicated by altitude and wind and the proximity of the sea, which has a direct influence on the region's precipitation and fog.

An Olympic Games is an especially demanding customer, requiring rapid and consistent updates to determine whether to cancel say, the downhill or ski jumping events.

An international team of scientists from nine countries assembled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Environment Canada is conducting a weather research and development project called the Science and Nowcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010 (SNOW-V10).

Nowcasting is a term often used to refer to the prediction of weather six hours in advance.

“The variability of snow on a mountain like Whistler is very great. This is an important task and a difficult one,” WMO director of research, Dr. Leonard Barrie told Swisster. “The team provides a weather update every minute.”

These reports are provided by “higher resolution prediction models,” said Barrie. “We have stations all over the mountain. Specialized surface-based ones, as well as Doppler radar and wind profile sensors.”

Despite the impressive array of equipment and expertise, forecasts are occasionally wrong (Wednesday's giant slalom provided some controversy) thanks to “the complexity of the terrain”, Barrie explained.

A major key to accurately predicting mountain weather is the location of the elusive zero degree temperature line, where rain often freezes and becomes snow.

Several factors, such as a shift in wind, can promptly trigger the line to rise or fall in attitude and is of vital importance for meteorologists and event planners.

“This has never been down with such precision before,” said Barrie.

When the Games ends, experts will evaluate the SNOW-V10 project to determine exactly how much more accurate it is when compared to standard technology.

Participating countries will then have more data at their disposal to improve their current prediction models and forecasts, according to Barrie.

Switzerland with its mountain topography and advanced meteorological infrastructure is expected to benefit.

“There will be a legacy from Whistler,” Barrie said. “It will have some impact on the way that clouds and snow precipitation are modeled – they will improve.”

“It will also affect climate predictions and perhaps provide better estimations on the future availability of water in some areas,” Barrie added.

Nonetheless, the system remains expensive thanks to the necessity of Doppler radar networks.

SNOW-V10 is part of WMO’s World Weather Research Programme (WWRP).

The international team includes the meteorological services of Austria, Australia, China, and Finland, university teams in Canada, the United States, Germany and Switzerland.

US, Russian and Chinese research laboratories and several private companies also took part.