Short-term Prediction Research
and Transition Center

Meetings

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the National Weather Service are pleased to announce a symposium on short-term convective forecasting and warnings with a focus on the southeastern United States. This meeting will be held 9-10 April 2002 at the National Space Science Technology Center, which is located on the campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The Southeastern United States experiences significant rainfall and extreme weather events including severe local storms, flash floods, land falling hurricanes, and winter storms. At the same time, the ability to anticipate these events and effectively communicate their hazards to the public remains an imposing challenge for operational forecasters. Techniques to integrate new observing systems, high-resolution numerical models, and machine intelligent algorithms are continuously under development at many universities and Federal Laboratories. The SPoRT Center, in conjunction with the NWS, is seeking effective strategies to evaluate the impact of new observing systems on short-term prediction and the warning decision making process.

The goals of the symposium are to:

1) Identify existing and future NASA satellite products most applicable to short-term forecasting issues,

2) Showcase promising avenues in the area of short-term convective forecasting and information dissemination,

3) To provide a forum for sharing insights among researchers, forecasters, decision makers and emergency managers regarding the future improvement of warning services within the region, and

4) Develop pathways to infuse new science and emerging technology into forecast operations.

The symposium will encompass the full spectrum of the convective forecast and warning process, ranging from thunderstorm prediction on time scales of up to 12 hours, to difficult warning issues involving split-second decision-making. Within this continuum, the potential role of new products and communication methods, as well as customer involvement and expectations will be addressed extensively.

The symposium will be organized into 4 sessions incorporating the following themes:

• Current and future NASA products applicable to operational forecasting
• Application of regional and local models to 0-12 hr quantitative precipitation forecasting
• Short-term (0-3 hr) forecasting of convective initiation and severe weather
• Bridging the gap between short-term storm extrapolation and prediction
• Integration of new data sources and tools in the forecast and warning decision-making process
• Improvement of products and services to the user community

Participants will consist of invited speakers and guests from the SPoRT Center, NWS, NOAA/ERL, regional universities, and local media outlets and emergency management agencies. Each speaker is allotted 20 minutes: 15 min. for the presentation and 5 min. for questions/discussion. Each speaker is requested to discuss their most challenging (top 3) forecast or warning science/technology issues. Speakers should also provide the organizers with an electronic copy of their presentation, which will be posted to the SPoRT Web site (http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport) after the symposium.

There will be two projectors provided- one for Mac and one for PC- to expedite the turn-around between speakers. SPEAKERS- PLEASE NOTE YOUR PREFERENCE WHEN YOU RETURN THE PRE-REGISTRATION FORM.

The establishment of a meaningful dialogue among the participants will be a crucial priority. As such, sufficient time will be allotted following each presentation to allow for effective discussion. In addition, three discussion forums are scheduled during the symposium to facilitate a deeper exploration of key issues. The expected outcome of the workshop is an implementation plan describing ways that observations, research, and experimental products can be used to improve the short-term forecasting tools and methods used by NWS forecasters and decision makers.