Meteorologists evaluate experimental warning decision-making technologies in the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Operations Area.
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The Experimental Warning Program's (EWP) mission is to improve the nation's hazardous weather warning services by bringing together forecasters, researchers, trainers, technology specialists, and other stakeholders to test and evaluate new techniques, applications, observing platforms, and technologies. The Experimental Warning Program is a part of the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) at the National Weather Center (NWC) in Norman, Oklahoma.
The EWP is comprised of two main work areas in the NWC. The first area is the HWT Operations Area which is a room located between the forecast operations areas of the Norman, OK NOAA/NWS Weather Forecast Office and the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center. This room is equipped with a variety of technology to support real-time experiments with visiting forecasters and researchers. The HWT "Spring Experiments" for both the EWP and the Experiment Forecast Program (EFP) are conducted in this room.
The EWP also has a "developmental lab" space at the NWC. Managed by the Warning Research and Development Division of the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the developmental lab includes four wall-mounted plasma screen displays and enough space for at least 10 workstations. The EWP uses Linux-based and Windows-based workstations for development and display of unique applications for improvement of hazardous weather warnings.
These two areas allow collaboration among researchers, forecasters, and developers. As new techniques are developed, these groups can gather and evaluate them in real-time, discussing how they can be improved and used in operations. Feedback from operational users can go immediately back into the research and development process, speeding up and improving technology transfer.
The EWP has an NWS
Initial testing of new platforms for severe weather warning applications is a critical part of the Experimental Warning Program. Forecasters, trainers, and applications developers join researchers to discuss the output from these sensors in real-time during events and in case-study mode. Images from some of these platforms may be viewed in real-time. Here are a few experimental platforms that have been evaluated within the EWP:
The Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) experiment is designed to assess the concept of rapidly-refreshing high spatial and temporal resolution gridded probabilistic hazard information as the basis for next-generation severe weather warnings. This concept is seen as the next step toward a future Warn-On-Forecast concept in which storm type and behavior statistics and numerical ensemble models will be used to help create probabilistic guidance about severe weather threats in time frames between today's typical NWS warning lead-times (approximately 10-15 minutes) and probabilistic convective weather watches and outlooks (4-6 hour lead-times). From these grids, it is envisioned that a variety of user-specific threat alerts could be derived across a variety of users' sophistications. These can range from high-resolution probabilistic point-warning trends which include times of arrival and departure for multiple threats, all the way down to the polygon- or county-based warnings similar to today. These hazard products could be customized to meet the needs of specific users to address their individual response times and exposure to the hazard, versus the current one-size-fits-all approach to severe weather warnings.
The Experimental Warning Program development lab is a place for development and testing of new warning technologies.
With the introduction of new platforms, new innovative and flexible display tools will be required so that forecasters can make better warning decisions. Testing and development of the Warning Decision Support System - Integrated Information is a critical component of testbed operations. In addition, evaluation of modifications to the Four-dimensional Stormcell Investigator is ongoing. This software is now available to National Weather Service forecasters nationwide, an example of a successful transition of research to operations within the EWP.
The WDSSII consists of a large number of multiple-radar and multiple-sensor algorithms with are run for the entire Continental United States. Output from these algorithms is available in real-time using KML image formats and are used at some NWS WFO to support warnings operations. Some examples of these algorithms include gridded hail products include a "Hail Swath" product, and a gridded "Rotation Tracks" product. Both of these specific products have been found extremely useful for NWS warning verification and post-storm damage surveys. Therefore, NSSL developed the On-Demand Severe Weather Verification System which has allowed NWS users to customize the location and event duration of the hail swath and rotation tracks product.
Severe weather climatologies by storm type are being developed. These climatologies will be used to develop guidance tools for forecasters that break down the severe weather risk by the type of storm being detected.
All of this guidance will be a part of a major change in warning philosophy to "Warn on Forecast". This means in the future forecasters will use new guidance tools to issue probabilistic warnings for severe weather before the first threat actually develops, extending warning lead times to 45-60 minutes or longer.
During the summer of 2006, the EWP conducted an experiment to collect ground validation information on hail swaths at very high temporal and spatial resolution called the Severe HAil Verification Experiment (SHAVE). In 2007 this effort was expanded to include swaths of damage from wind and tornadoes in the Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment. So far in two seasons, over 10,000 good verification data points have been collected by the SHAVE team. This effort will lead to new methods for high-resolution severe storm verification that will enhance the climatological database and provide a validation source for higher-resolution warning guidance tools and applications. SHAVE will continue in 2008.
We have begun to explore HWT collaborations with social scientists via the Social Science Woven Into Meteorology (SSWIM) program at the University of Oklahoma. The EWP hosted an Advanced Weather and Society Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) workshop in September 2008. This workshop was designed to bring together research meteorologists at the EWP with a group of stakeholders representing a diverse user community, to integrate societal impact research at the beginning stages of the development of the probabilistic hazardous information (PHI) experiment. Future EWP activities may include innovative applications of social science techniques in order to make the transition to operations even more socially relevant.
For more information on the Experimental Warning Program, email Greg Stumpf .
