Nowcasting demonstration for AMS'2003

•  Map of forecasts
•  Map of probabilistic forecasts
•  Panel of probabilistic forecasts

Artificial Intelligence and Meteorology

A fuzzy-logic-based, data-mining system produces highly accurate, time-evolution forecasts of most probable ranges of cloud ceiling height and visibility. It is unique among ceiling and visibility prediction systems:

Fuzzy logic and case-based reasoning are leading methodologies for the application of artificial intelligence. We describe a system, WIND-1, that combines fuzzy logic and case-based reasoning to produce forecasts of airport cloud ceiling and visibility. Knowledge about meteorological and temporal features that experienced forecasters use to construct analogous climatological scenarios is encoded in a fuzzy similarity measure. The fuzzy similarity measure is used to locate k-nearest neighbors from airports' historical databases. These nearest neighbors are adapted to produce values of forecast parameters. Experiments show that the WIND-1 system produces highly accurate forecasts. It takes about one second for WIND-1 to produce a forecast.
- Bjarne Hansen and Denis Riordan, 2003: Fuzzy case-based prediction of cloud ceiling and visibility, 3rd Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications to the Environmental Science, American Meteorological Society (presentation).

Possible applications:

•  Tools to help with TAF preparation, and
•  Tools to help with proactive alerting of impending problems.

Based on current technological and organizational trends, the best way to improve weather forecasting over the coming years will be through R&D partnerships.

I would welcome any questions or suggestions.

Bjarne Hansen
E-mail: bjarne@cs.dal.ca

References


Intelligent Weather Systems AMS 2003 Meeting
The use of fuzzy logic has increased exponentially during the past three decades, based on the number of occurrences of the word "fuzzy" in titles of articles in engineering and mathematical journals.
- Lofti Zadeh, 2001: Statistics on the impact of fuzzy logic, webpage.

During the past decade, fuzzy logic has enabled the development of many applications for nowcasting.

Opinions expressed here are solely those of the author except where indicated as otherwise.