DRU: A Multi-disciplinary Approach to Communicating Weather Forecast Uncertainty

DRU：传达天气预报不确定性的多学科方法

• 批准号: 0724721
• 负责人: Susan Joslyn
• 金额: $ 108.57万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-10-01 至 2011-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0724721&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DRU; Multi; disciplinary; Approach; Communicating

With the exception of the probability of precipitation, information about uncertainty is rarely communicated in public weather forecasts, even though it could improve weather-related decisions with important economic and safety consequences. A recent National Research Council report found that assessing, communicating and disseminating forecast uncertainty information to the end-user is the largest as yet unaddressed task before the weather forecasting community. The purpose of this project is to bridge that gap with the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team of psychologists, atmospheric scientists, statisticians, and applied physicists. This project will define the psychological processes involved in understanding and using weather forecast uncertainty in realistic contexts among non-expert users. Research will be conducted to determine the impact of alternative methods of presenting information, including verbal explanations as well as visual images and graphs. The results of this research will be applied to producing an unprecedented prototype weather forecasting website that presents forecasts to the public that are entirely probabilistic. It will give uncertainty-bracketed forecasts for temperature, precipitation and wind speed. It will also provide warning information for extreme events, such as high winds, extreme temperatures and extreme amounts of rainfall. Although such warnings have important safety implications, there has been very little research devoted to the methods for producing or communicating this information. This will require the development of innovative methods of analyzing and displaying probabilistic information for extreme events.The project will also develop and provide graphics that compare past probabilistic forecasts to observed values, to demonstrate to users that although observed values may not always match single value forecasts, they are often within the boundaries of the probability range. This feature will enhance understanding of the probabilistic nature of the forecast as well as improving user trust.

除了降水的可能性之外，关于不确定性的信息很少在公共天气预报中传达，尽管它可以改善与天气有关的决策，带来重要的经济和安全后果。 国家研究理事会最近的一份报告发现，评估、传达和传播预报不确定性信息给最终用户是气象预报界尚未解决的最大任务。 该项目的目的是通过心理学家，大气科学家，统计学家和应用物理学家的多学科团队的努力来弥合这一差距。该项目将定义在非专家用户中在现实环境中理解和使用天气预报不确定性的心理过程。 将进行研究，以确定提供信息的替代方法的影响，包括口头解释以及视觉图像和图表。这项研究的结果将被应用于制作一个前所未有的原型天气预报网站，向公众提供完全概率性的预报。 它将对温度、降水和风速进行不确定性预测。 它还将为极端事件提供预警信息，如大风、极端温度和极端降雨量。虽然这些警告具有重要的安全意义，但很少有研究致力于产生或传达这些信息的方法。 这将需要开发分析和显示极端事件概率信息的创新方法，该项目还将开发和提供将过去的概率预测与观测值进行比较的图形，向用户表明，尽管观测值可能不总是与单值预测相匹配，但它们通常在概率范围的边界内。 此功能将增强对预测概率性质的理解，并提高用户信任度。