A seamless probabilistic forecasting system for decision making in Civil Protection

An innovative seamless probabilistic forecasting system has been developed within the EU project PROFORCE (Bridging of PRObabilistic FORecasts and Civil protEction). The system merges four different ensemble prediction systems and provides weather forecasts and the corresponding forecast uncertainties in a seamless way from several days ahead to the nowcasting range with increasing time and space resolution. The probabilistic information from the seamless system is tailored to the needs of the end users in civil protection and is illustrated on a user-friendly web portal. The seamless weather forecasting and warning system is impact based and was designed by meteorologists and civil protection users together. This article describes the seamless system and discusses its perception in civil protection based on several severe weather situations occurring during the two years of the project. It has been demonstrated that the seamless forecasts allow a longer preparation time due to earlier warnings. The probability information can help in planning and decision making in civil protection. The weaknesses of the forecasting system, in particular the limits in predicting small scale convective systems, are also discussed in the paper