engleski

First results of forecast verification of Terminal Aerodrome Forecast during the last 10 years

As part of a quality management system, ICAO Annex 3 requires proving the accuracy of forecasts for aviation. For the flight planning purposes, one of the most important forecasts is the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF). Written by the forecaster, it contains wind, visibility, weather phenomena, cloud conditions and temperature forecasts for the airport for a 24 hours period. Recently, standard verification procedure of TAF forecasts in Croatia Control Ltd. has been established and regular seasonal verification reports for winter and summer are produced. Verification follows the approach proposed by Mahringer (2008) which is used in Austro Control. In order to obtain the lowest critical values, we had analyzed results for the past 10 years. Most of the results show seasonal variability eg. better results during winter for wind, visibility, and ceiling. Majority of meteorological variables show positive trends forecast accuracy, especially for thunderstorm and wind gusts. Only forecast for ceiling and temperature show a slow and insignificant decrease. Changes in personnel, new and optimized organization of forecasting tasks, and big changes in forecasters’ tools could have attributed to negative trends. Development of forecasting procedures, improvement of numerical models and additional effort in training in some special topics such as convection, wind gusts or fog, could be related to positive trends. After all, despite limitations of the verification system (imperfect measurements, form of the forecasts, choosing the verification approach and choosing the verification scores), permanent monitoring of accuracy of forecasts should provide better forecasts, which in the end improves the safety in aviation.

verification, TAF, forecast, trends,

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