Forecast Verification: A Practitioner′s Guide in Atmospheric Science - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471497592 ISBN 13: 9780471497592

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 2003

Synopsis

This handy reference introduces the subject of forecast verification and provides a review of the basic concepts, discussing different types of data that may be forecast.

Each chapter covers a different type of predicted quantity (predictand), then looks at some of the relationships between economic value and skill scores, before moving on to review the key concepts and summarise aspects of forecast verification that receive the most attention in other disciplines.

The book concludes with a discussion on the most important topics in the field that are the subject of current research or that would benefit from future research.

• An easy to read guide of current techniques with real life case studies

• An up–to–date and practical introduction to the different techniques and an examination of their strengths and weaknesses

• Practical advice given by some of the world?s leading forecasting experts

• Case studies and illustrations of actual verification and its interpretation

• Comprehensive glossary and consistent statistical and mathematical definition of commonly used terms

About this title

About the Author

Professor Ian Jolliffe is currently a Honorary Visiting Professor in SECaM. He took early retirement in 2004 form the University of Aberdeen, where he is Professor Emeritus and where he spent 12 years as Professor of Statistics before his retirement. Before Aberdeen, he was Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Kent for 22 years, apart from two one–year visiting posts at the Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph.
He gained his PhD in Statistics in 1970, and has been an active teacher and researcher in Applied Statistics since then. His thesis was on variable selection in principal component analysis (PCA), and topics related to PCA have formed a substantial strand of his research throughout his career.
He has a long–standing interest in applications of Statistics to atmospheric science, and forecast verification is now one of his main research interests. He has co–authored two other books and has over 85 other publications; roughly one third of these are directly related to applications in climate or weather. He has successfully supervised 20 research students, 16 of them at PhD level.

From the Back Cover

For more than 100 years, meteorologists have been making forecasts of weather and climatic events. In order to judge the quality of these forecasts and improve forecasting systems, scientists working in this field have developed and applied many different verification and evaluation techniques and scores. Forecast verification is concerned with judging how good are these systems and forecasts.

This book begins with an introduction to the subject of forecast verification and a review of the basic concepts, discussing different types of data that may be forecast before moving on to the main chapters, where each chapter covers a different type of predicted quantity (predictand). This book then looks at some of the relationships between economic value and skill scores, and finally moves on to review the key concepts and summarise aspects of forecast verification that receive the most attention in other disciplines. The book concludes with a discussion on the most important topics in the field that are the subject of current research or that would benefit from future research.

Key features of this book includes:

• An easy to read guide of current techniques with real life case studies
• An up to date and practical introduction to the different techniques and an examination of their strengths and weaknesses
• Practical advice given by some of the world′s leading forecasting experts
• Case studies and illustrations of actual verification and its interpretation
• Comprehensive glossary and consistent statistical and mathematical definition of commonly used terms

This book will be a handy reference for forecast practitioners in Government and private sector organisations involved in environmental forecasting such as national weather services and climate centres, meteorological and climatological consultants to business and public decision makers, and those who are involved in developing forecasting systems, using forecast products or making decisions based on forecast.

This book is suitable for postgraduates and researchers in forecasting studies, climatology, meteorology and those in the atmospheric oceanic and environmental science community. It is also a useful supplementary textbook for undergraduates in environmental science, climatology and meteorology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471497592
• ISBN 13: 9780471497592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Jolliffe Ian T., Stephenson David B.