Despite increasing capabilities of advanced technology to warn and
protect societies from weather related hazards, casualties and economic
losses continue at an unacceptably high level. The reasons for this
differ across the globe. In some countries, there is a lack of basic
infrastructure to provide protection, while in others the available
resources are not used effectively. A common problem is that recipients
of weather forecasts do not understand what the impact of a weather
event will be.
The Weather Impacts Research project is part of the Met Office's
contribution to THORPEX and the aim of the project is to develop
diagnostic tools which relate predicted weather to economic and
human impacts. The project will make use of existing research
commissioned for the UK in the SWIM (Severe Weather Impacts Modelling)
and Health Forecasting projects and seek to identify new sources
of information that will contribute to the available data.
The research will utilise improvements in the one to fourteen
day forecasting of severe weather events, brought about by the
use of ensembles rather than deterministic forecasts, to develop
a model which relates predicted weather to economic and societal
impacts. The aim of this work is to produce timely warnings of
the onset of hazardous weather and deliver a clear summary of
the impacts associated with a particular weather type of a particular
severity in order that society can better prepare and protect
itself. The research will focus on the impacts associated with
periods of prolonged cold or heat, and strong winds and precipitation
associated with tropical and extratropical cyclones, and develop
ways of better depicting the impact of such events in social and
economic terms.
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