On Friday 8th April, we were pleased to welcome Malcolm Kitchen, a CDE Expert Network member, to present his webinar entitled ‘Opportunistic Data for Weather Forecasting’. This talk continued our ‘Data digitisation, rescue, and re-purposing’ webinar series.
The economic benefits of accurately targeting weather warnings is driving the development of higher resolution operational forecasting models. The level of detail at which we are able to forecast the weather now exceeds the level at which we can observe it. Real-time observations are vital for situational awareness and verification of the forecasts, so it is important that the ‘resolution gap’ is not allowed to widen. It is not economically or practically feasible to bridge the gap through massive expansion of conventional observing networks. Hence attention is focussed on alternative sources of low-cost/high volume information on the atmospheric state. This seminar will describe some successful developments of opportunistic data sources, along with some failures and work in progress. Opportunities for involvement of the academic sector in this area of R&D will be outlined.
Further information and details, this and the wider webinar series is online at https://digitalenvironment.org/cde-webinar-series/#kitchen.