Forecast Verification for the African Severe Weather Forecasting
Author: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Allan Murphy, who built his scientific career on the science of verification, has said: “Verification activity has value only if the information generated leads to a decision about the forecast or system being verified.” This immediately suggests that there must be a user for the verification output, someone who wants to know something specific about the quality of a forecast product, and who is in a position to make a decision based on verification results. The user could be, for example, a forecaster who is provided with the output from several models on a daily basis and wishes to know which of the models can be relied on most for forecast guidance. Or, the user could be the manager of a project such as the WMO Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Project (SWFDP), who wishes to know whether the increased access to model guidance products is leading to a measurable improvement in forecasts issued by a National Meteorological and Hydrological Service (NMHS).