Anomalous propagation (anaprop), analogous to the upper mirage in the visual wavelengths, is still a major problem in radar meteorology. This phenomenon assumes particular importance in automatic recognition and estimation of rainfall. Anaprop echoes from terrain features such as hills and coasts often give echoes up to 50-60 dBZ, equivalent to heavy rain or hail in severe thunderstorms. Anaprop echoes from sea waves may be comparable in strength to those from moderate precipitation and also form similar patterns. Based on the evidence that the vertical reflectivity profile of precipitation is quite different from the anaprop profile, two methods for anaprop identification are presented. The method proposed by the Servizio Meteorologico Regionale (SMR, Italy) simply uses the operational scan procedure to discriminate between precipitation and anaprop. At the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute an ‘ad hoc’ scan strategy has been developed in order to obtain much more detail of the lowest reflectivity profile. A number of statistical parameters have been used to achieve a better discrimination between precipitation, land and sea clutter. A number of case studies, representing different echo intensities and patterns, and including a case of anaprop with embedded precipitation, are presented to assess the impact of these methods.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have jointly recommended that the UV Index (UVI) should be used to inform the public about possible health risks due to overexposure to solar radiation, especially skin damage. To test the current operational status of measuring and modelling techniques used in providing the public with UVI information, this article compares cloudless sky UVIs (measured using five instruments at four locations with different latitudes and climate) with the results of 13 models used in UVI forecasting schemes. For the models, only location, total ozone and solar zenith angle were provided as input parameters. In many cases the agreement is acceptable, i.e. less than 0.5 UVI. Larger differences may originate from instrumental errors and shortcomings in the models and their input parameters. A possible explanation for the differences between models is the treatment of the unknown input parameters, especially aerosols.

The Met. Office currently operates a high resolution mesoscale model that provides guidance on the likely formation of radiation fog on the spatial scale of 30-40 km. A project has been under way to build a Site-Specific Forecast Model (SSFM) using a one-dimensional version of the Met. Office Unified Model as a basis, with suitable modifications to its surface treatment driven by output from three-dimensional NWP models. The SSFM has been applied to the forecasting of radiation fog as part of the European Commission sponsored project 4MIDaBLE (4Dimensional Met. Information DataBase Linked across Europe). The first part of this paper describes the model formulation and discusses its behaviour simulating radiation fog in idealised cases and its sensitivity to geostrophic wind speed and initial humidity. In addition to the expected sensitivity to wind and humidity, it has been found that the treatment of surface exchange processes can have a small but significant impact on the formation of fog, its formation and clearance times and its depth.

River flow forecasting using rainfall predictions from a mesoscale weather prediction model in combination with a physically-based rainfall disaggregation model incorporating small-scale topographic variability is demonstrated. Rainfall predicted by the UK Met Office Mesoscale Model on a 16.8 km grid is disaggregated onto a 2 km grid using a rainfall model which adds the effect of small-scale topography. River flow is calculated by a distributed rainfall-runoff model using the output from the rainfall model. A thunderstorm event on 7 June 1996 over the Brue catchment in Somerset, England is used to evaluate the models. The rainfall model successfully forecasts the band-shaped rainfall field within the catchment and the error in the total amount of flow during the storm is only -12%. An error of -40% in the peak flow is attributed to the treatment of convective clouds in the model.

The Met. Office currently operates a high resolution mesoscale model that provides guidance on the likely formation of radiation fog on the spatial scale of 30-40km. A project has been under way to build a Site-Specific Forecast Model (SSFM) using a one-dimensional version of the Met. Office Unified Model as a basis, with suitable modifications to its surface treatment and, driven by output from three-dimensional NWP models. The SSFM has been applied to the forecasting of radiation fog as part of the European Commission sponsored project 4MIDaBLE (4Dimensional Met. Information DataBase Linked across Europe). This paper describes the influence of site observations on the model evolution for two real fog cases. This requires a method of forcing the SSFM via coupling to three-dimensional NWP model output; such a method is described. It is shown that when observational data at the site of interest is incorporated into the model's initial state humidity measurements provide the greatest impact on model evolution. However, their influence is short-lived (typically less than 6 hours) implying the importance of initialisation time in the correct forecast of radiation fog.

In order to decide whether or not a weather service supplier is giving good value for money we need to monitor the quality of the forecasts and the use that is made of the forecasts to estimate their value. A number of verification statistics are examined to measure the quality of forecasts - including Miss Rate, False Alarm Rate, the Peirce Skill Score and the Odds Ratio Skill Score - and a means of testing the significance of these values is presented. In order to assess the economic value of the forecasts a value index is suggested that takes into account the cost-loss ratio and forecast errors. It is suggested that a combination of these quality and value statistics could be used by weather forecast customers to choose the best forecast provider and to set limits for performance related contracts.

This paper presents a general review of ensemble forecasting techniques, with a focus on short-range and tropical cyclone predictions. The basic ideas and terminology of ensemble forecasting are introduced, and using four measures to evaluate an ensemble (ensemble mean forecast, consistency, spread versus skill, and inclusiveness), various potential utilities (e.g. dynamical probabilistic forecasts) are illustrated. Since the perturbation methodologies designed for medium-range forecasts of mid-latitude synoptic-scale systems - singular vectors, bred modes, and so on - are already quite mature, they are only briefly described here. The general problems encountered in applying ensemble forecasting techniques to short-range and tropical cyclone forecasts are diagnosed, and some recent studies on these topics reviewed. In general, the perturbation methodologies used for short-range ensembles to date can have a skill comparable to or slightly higher than their corresponding high-resolution control forecast. However, the complicated problem of the relationship between initial condition errors and model deficiencies persists. A similar situation also applies to ensembles designed for tropical cyclone forecasting. An additional difficulty is the different error characteristics encountered in the tropics, mainly the result of the strong convection in the area and the mutual interaction with the ocean. Studies from several research groups use quite different perturbation methodologies, but the results are encouraging. Most of them performed ensemble forecasting of tropical cyclone motion, but extensions to tropical cyclone intensity forecasts are also being developed.

The annual amount of salt used to prevent slippery conditions on roads was estimated with the help of winter monthly mean air temperatures. Air temperature is measured reliably at almost all meteorological stations and the use of air temperature for the estimation of road maintenance conditions is a tempting alternative compared with the use of more complicated indices calculated using meteorological observations available at only a small number of stations. It was found that in Finnish climatological conditions, warmer than normal weather in November and March and colder than normal weather in December, January and February reduces the need for salting. Warm mid-winter months mean slippery conditions and, consequently, an abundant use of salt. The temperature explained about 60% of the annual variation of salt use and thus gave surprisingly good estimates for the salting amounts.

The performance of the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts model in forecasting the tracks of tropical cyclones in the South China Sea and parts of the western North Pacific for the years 1991-8 was assessed using 2.5° resolution data transmitted operationally over the WMO Global Telecommunication System. Minimum mean sea level pressure centres were used to identify and track the positions of tropical cyclones, and in 1998 the positions of the centre of maximum 850 hPa relative vorticity were also used. The model's performance was compared with that of subjective forecasts made by the Hong Kong Observatory and with no-skill forecasts as represented by a climatology-persistence method in the 1990s. Significant improvements in the model forecasting of tropical cyclone tracks were identified towards the end of that period. The model mean forecast errors for 24-hour, 48-hour and 72-hour positions were 215 km, 340 km and 453 km in the early 1990s (1991-3) respectively, compared with 155 km, 244 km and 292 km in the late 1990s (1996-8).

Atmospheric dispersion models are now being used by some local authorities in the United Kingdom as part of their management of urban air quality. Local authorities are also involved in using air pollution model output in environmental impact assessments for industrial projects, assessing the impact of road improvement or traffic management schemes and environmental health studies. The study, based in Northampton, UK, is concerned with the limitations of the meteorological data available to local authorities. The results indicate that while there is no major problem in the case of long-term average pollution concentration, meteorological data limitations pose problems when modelling individual events, particularly on occasions when higher pollution levels are expected.

The properties of the upper air winds used by the commercial aviation community are investigated. Analysis of the spectra shows that the forecasts have errors in both power and phase. However, the constant multiplier presently applied at The Met Office to the forecast winds before they are sent to the airlines remains best for remedying the speed underestimates characteristic of the forecast winds relative to those observed. We provide evidence for the success of this multiplier including the existence of a systematic negative speed bias as a function of the forecast wind speed. A constant multiplier greater than one (presently set at 1.04) always produces reductions in the traditional speed and vector wind rms scores, as well as an aviation specific rms relative flight time error. The investigations reveal that the constant multiplier is also optimal given the verification measures used; it must therefore remain integral to the operational processing of the forecast winds before transmission to the aviation community, at least for the foreseeable future.

The atmospheric and fuel conditions that led to the case of extreme fire behaviour registered in Puerto Madryn in north-eastern Patagonia, Argentina, on 21 January 1994 were analysed in this study. The analyses included surface and upper-air meteorological conditions, fuel composition and load, and morphometry of the burnt area. When the fire occurred the total fuel load was 16 688 ± 2 611 kg of dry matter per hectare, with fine fuel representing 66% of the total fuel load. At the time of the major fire run, the air temperature reached 32 °C and relative humidity decreased to 13%. The fuel load and its high proportion of fine fuels, the extreme temperatures, the low relative humidity, and the changes in wind directions which resulted from the conjunction of synoptic and local-scale phenomena, enhanced the development of a large convection column which favoured the interaction of surface and upper-air winds. As in similar cases reported for other ecosystems, the combination of these phenomena led to this case of extreme fire behaviour. It is intended that this analysis will contribute to the future development of fire alert systems for the region and to the worldwide knowledge of extreme fire behaviour in different scenarios.

The melting of snow as it falls through the 0 °C level is a significant meteorological process that is important for its impact as the bright band of enhanced reflectivity in radar observations. Thus, it is necessary to understand the variability of the phenomena and to determine the factors upon which it depends. This paper reports on preliminary investigations into the observations of the bright band over the UK using vertically pointing radar. These results are compared with output from a simple model of the melting of snowflakes and with other observations from Canada and the Netherlands. The vertical depth of the bright band was determined from the vertical pointing radar data for four cases of widespread frontal rainfall. An increase in the depth of the bright band was seen with increasing background reflectivities. Depths of 100-150 m at 10 dBZ increased to 200-400 m at 25 dBZ. Results from a simple model of the melting of snowflakes were compared with the vertical pointing radar observations. Similar trends were seen in the model output, but in general the model produced deeper but less intense bright bands. Notable in the model results was the lack of strong dependence of the depth on vertical air motions. Indeed, the bright band depth only increased by approximately 30 m in a downdraft of 1 m s-1. Comparisons of the bright band characteristics with other observations from elsewhere show that the bright band depth was similar to that observed by Klaasen (1988) in the Netherlands, but shallower than those observed by Fabry & Zawadski (1995) in Canada.

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