Cliff Mass Weather Blog
This week I fielded a call from a reporter from the Washington Post, who wanted to discuss why the U.S. has fallen behind in using machine learning for weather prediction. The story is here.
Specifically, NOAA's global model, the UFS, is now in third or fourth place behind the European Center, the UK Meteorology Office, and often the Canadians. The plot below shows a comparison for the middle troposphere (at a pressure of 500 hPa) between the European Center and the NOAA. We are behind and not catching up.
To put it bluntly, U.S. operational prediction is being left in the dust. We have settled into mediocrity with little hope of change.
This is entirely unnecessary and I can tell you why. I have written two peer-reviewed papers in a major meteorological journal ( here) and have served on national committees and attended numerous meetings considering the issue.
U.S. numerical weather prediction (NWP), which uses computer simulation to predict future weather, should be the best in the world.
