DISPLAY, ANALYSIS AND DISSEMINATION OF METEOROLOGICAL INFORMATION

Abstract

Meteorological forecasting is a combination of art and science. The need for the human intelligence process still remains. Computers have revolutioned the science of meteorology, but many forecasting tasks still require a large amount of human interpretation and interaction. The forecaster needs to have rapid access to information in order to verify, review, modify, and interpret the computer results. Currently the forecasters review the various data types separately. The system under development will synthesize and display to the forecaster satellite imagery, graphical overlays of the meteorological fields, and alphanumeric reports in a timely manner. A local network will place the forecaster directly on an electronic network which spans the world. Additional tools are provided to the forecaster, such as animation and pseudo-color, to enhance the human recognition processes. Multiple level zooms are utilized to span the range from global to mesoscale phenomena. The forecaster then draws in the human interpreted details. The system merges the human input and adds the computer generated portions. The combined forecast information is disseminated to the weather central and field users. The system will reduce the product generation time by fifty percent. In. addition, special products can be rapidly made up and sent to the users.