Identification

Title

Nowcasting challenges during the Beijing Olympics: Successes, failures and implications for future nowcasting systems

Abstract

The Beijing 2008 Forecast Demonstration Project (B08FDP) included a variety of nowcasting systems from China, Australia, Canada and the United States. A goal of the B08FDP was to demonstrate state-of-the-art nowcasting systems within a mutual operational setting. The nowcasting systems were a mix of radar echo extrapolation methods, numerical models, techniques that blended numerical model and extrapolation methods and systems incorporating forecaster input. This paper focuses on the skill of the nowcasting systems to forecast convective storms which threatened or affected the conduct of the Olympic Games held in Beijing, China. The topography surrounding Beijing provided unique challenges in that it often enhanced the degree and extent of storm initiation, growth and dissipation which took place over short time and space scales. The skill of the numerical techniques were inconsistent from hour-to-hour and day-to-day and it was speculated that without assimilation of real-time radar reflectivity and Doppler velocity fields to support model initialization, particularly for weakly forced convective events, it will be very difficult for models to provide accurate forecasts on the nowcasting time and space scales. Automated blending techniques tended to be no more skillful than extrapolation since they depended heavily on the models to provide storm initiation, growth and dissipation. However, even with the cited limitations among individual nowcasting systems, the Chinese Olympic forecasters considered the B08FDP human consensus forecasts to be useful. Key to the success of the human forecasts was the development of nowcasting rules predicated on the character of Beijing convective weather realized over the previous two summers. Based on the B08FDP experience, the status of nowcasting convective storms and future directions are presented.

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document

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https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7w95bf5

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eng

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

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2010-12-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

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Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-17T14:51:13.747717

Metadata language

eng; USA