Datameteo and NESA presenting Datameteo NOW the nowcasting short term forecast platform
Datameteo e NESA were at Meteorological Technology World Expo 2013 in Bruxelles on October 2013 15th-17th.
the must-attend event for anyone looking for improved weather forecasting ability, technologies and services with a professional audience coming from various different sectors like: aviation, marine, other mobilities, energy or enviroment.
In this innovative and competitive contest NESA professional weather stations and Datameteo weather provider launch the new interactive weather platform based on Datameteo NOW technology.
This type of platform uses the potential of accurate weather stations data strategically placed on the ground combined with high resolution gridded satellite outputs. In this way with can convenient adjust the satellite weather outputs referring to the linked ground weather stations. An innovative GIS system provide to divide the area on a poligonal basis of a chosen radius ,linking the reference weather station at the gridded sat point inside the drawn area.
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The GIS system feel free the customer to choose the best polygon radius to apply keeping in account the desidered grounded weather stations interfaced with the sat grid. On one hand unconsistent weather station installations ( only the 1% of the earth is covered by measures) is one of the reason to use satellite data. On the other hand satellites covers the whole earth with high resolution gridded data (ie Meteosat infrared data have a resolution of 3 Km pixel. It means a virtual measurment point every 3 Kms) available at least every 15 minutes.
The GIS system works placing the weather stations where more complicated is the local weather scenario.In this way the strategical installation of the right number weather station on the ground and the related area sat points help to improve the accuracy of the virtual gridded sat measures linked with the real data ground station inside the area
We have used the GIS system to divide Italy into 374 polygonal areas with a radius of 10 Kms.At this area are associated 374 different sat grid points that functions as virtual measurments weather stations. The sat point density varies keeping account of the altitude terrain profiles. Higher sat point density are expected close to more complex horograpical areas like hills and so. If inside these polygons some hundrends of ground weather station will be strategically placed you can easly cover the whole territory with a 10 Km grids of quality adjusted real and "virtual " measures.
To maximize the potential of using the sat device grid if you wanna settled-up a 3 Km grid over Italy you will obtain around 2000 polygonal areas.This is the best fit compromise in terms of sat grid resolution usability, associated at a potential ground weather stations installation.
The first impression could take to consider the satellite use as global source of accurate data. The satellite sensors can work both into the visible or infrared spectrum, providing a huge amount of high resolution images during the whole day or night.These images can be easly converted into raw data output like: wind distribution, temperature and solar radiation estimate etc...
The satellites works with some limitations or sensor failure and errors may occur. During the bad weather a very unstable atmosphere with many cloud layer and frequently thermal inversions can cause a wrong data trasmission by the sat.
Datameteo NOW algorithm helps to adjust the actual weather data that comes from the sat. Below you can see the comparison between the air temperature station vs the sat point temperature.
As you can see into the graph above there is a very good correlation between the hourly air temperature of a weather reporting station close to Bari (red line) compared with the air temperature given by the related sat point (yellow line). This means the capability of the platform to properly calibrate the sat model data.
Managing the typical grid sat point data deviations you can have a local fine tuning of the outputs.On the other hand you can monitoring the ground weather station data consistency. Sometimes due to lack of maintenance , sensor anonalies or failures wrong data can be transmitted by the weather station. In these cases an validation protocol tool is stricly applied and updated to validate the output data.
At this point there is not a secret that good virtual and real data can mean more accuracy related to weather forecast . In this case he keywords of this report will become: nowcasting , short and medium term forecast calibration.
Combining the potential of modelling, that is a technique based on numerical high resolution calculation of complex weather parameters on 10 minutes or hourly basis , with statistical and neural approaches that uses real and virtual Datameteo NOW data with can obtain highly reilable numerical forecasts that involves the nowcasting ( some hours in advance ) and the short term (some days in advance).
How are the Datameteo NOW benefits?.
- World Wide Coverage
-Easy integration with every type of existing ground station network
-GIS tool to manage future ground station integration with sat point of a designated area with a planned grid resolution
-Validation sat point data and ground data tool
-Easy interface with any modelling architecture-
Improve actual, nowcasting and short term weather forecast
-Save money and improve data quality
Datameteo NOW can provide solutions to sectors like the air-navigation services , meteorological providers, to industries whose activities are intimately correlated with the weather ( trading, energy, aviation, safety, defense, media, risk assessment)
Below you can find some simple integration of Datameteo NOW: the screenshot below is referred to our website.
The second image below is regarding the meteorological messagges related the weather aviation field: below there is the integration to represent the TREND type message associated at a METAR report. In few words the TREND is a very short term forecast for the next 2 hours associated at the METAR message that is the routine aeroportual weather station issued hourly or half hourly. In this case Datameteo NOW can show the short term forecast for the next 2 hours directly into the TREND format code and this forecast can be validated manually by the on duty forecaster. With the same format are available forecast in the Terminal Aeroportual Forecast (TAF) format.
These technologies can represent a great added value but the human cleverness remains at the center of every the weather events evaluation process.
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