Reliability of VISCA DSS on Predicting Extreme Events
- Written by Maha Al-Salehi
The weather conditions have an important role in the development of many social and economic activities. Forecasting of weather conditions can be useful to plan activities especially during extreme events as such information can help to react in time and, consequently, support businesses which are weather-sensitive. This is the case of the wine sector; whose production and crop quality highly depend on the weather conditions.
In this context, weather forecasting becomes of a paramount importance and provides added-value to the end-users to manage their resources and in-field activities and to anticipate potential extreme events.
Last mid-September, VISCA DSS predicted a decrease in temperature and dry weather conditions in Raimat, where our Spanish demonstration site is located. The short-term weather forecast model, that provides weather information up to 48 hours in advance, was accurate in its predictions as shown in the validation graphics below. By this period, maximum temperatures decreased by more than 7oC, an important decrease to consider in the field work.
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VISCA DSS is offering the deterministic short-term and probabilistic mid-term weather forecast for the next 2 days and 10 days, respectively. The variables forecasted are temperature, relative humidity, global radiation, wind speed and precipitation.
VISCA DSS shows the rain, wind and temperature mid-term weather forecast for a time slot
VISCA DSS shows the rain mid-term weather forecast from 25th September to 2nd October
What would happened if forecast is not accurate?
In order to reduce the biases of the deterministic short-term forecast model, some improvements have been implemented. Firstly, we have chosen the parametrization of physical processes of the model that better perform the areas of interest. Secondly, we have investigated the potential improvements in using numerical weather prediction data assimilation system to set-up better initial conditions. Every day the deterministic short-term weather forecast is validated against the weather observation stations located in the demonstration sites to evaluate the accuracy of the model.
Which impacts are expected taken into consideration the predictions of VISCA DSS?
While having in 2 days in advance the weather forecast product is useful for near future in-field activities, having weather forecast information 10 days in advance is useful to minimize risks related to mid-term tasks. For instance, if a heat wave is forecasted in 6 days, wine producers could act in advance by irrigating the field more than the usual rate before such an event to adapt to the higher temperature.
