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Rapidly changing winter weather, Swiss Alps

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “And now the mountain weather forecast for the next two minutes!” Such extremely short-term weather forecasting might be a thing of the future, but scientists are gathering and studying data in Vancouver, Canada to help them reach that point. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Canada are hosting one group of experts whose specialty is not a sport, but very short term weather forecasts, called “nowcasting”, which make predictions up to six hours before an event.

A team of scientists from nine countries assembled by the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization and Environment Canada  is conducting a weather research and development project called the Science and Nowcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010, aka Snow-V10.

Nowcasting has already been used for Olympic Games, but in summer, at the Sydney 2000 Games and the Beijing 2008 Games. The prediction of winter weather in mountains is more difficult because conditions change rapidly with time and altitude.

The Olympics Games projects begin one year before the Games, with testing, and evaluations of data start a month before the Games. The WMO reports that “in the case of Snow-V10, [we've gained] improved understanding of the complex interplay between winter weather systems and mountainous terrain. In winter conditions in the mountains, researchers have already noted the benefit of a greater reliance on high resolution (1 km or less) numerical weather prediction models and on frequent observational intervals with some sensors reporting every minute. In contrast, during the Summer Games forecasters relied to a greater extent on radar to track and predict storm motion.”

The results of the Snow-V10 project are expected to benefit winter season forecasts for aviation, ground transport and recreation in mountainous regions.