Recent Developments in Automated Prediction of Ceiling and Visibility

Abstract The history of the National Weather Service's development efforts in terminal weather prediction for aviation is discussed and results from recent experiments involving three approaches are presented. In one approach, single-station equations for predicting the probability of specific ceiling and visibility categories are developed. The equations are based upon weather observations at the local terminal only and are derived by using the Regression Estimation of Event Probabilities screening technique. In another approach, Model Output Statistics (MOS) is used to develop probability forecast equations for ceiling and visibility. MOS consists of determining a statistical relationship between a predictand and the forecast output of numerical prediction models. The statistical relationship is determined by screening regression in this paper. The two numerical models used are the National Meteorological Center's (NMC) primitive equation (PE) model and the Techniques Development Laboratory's Subsynopti...