The Forecast Office (FO) is part of the MAP Operations Centre (MOC). It is situated within the rooms of the Austrian Aviation Weather Service (ACG) at Innsbruck Airport, in the vicinity of the civil Austrian weather service (ZAMG). The FO at the ground floor has about 46m2 and will be equipped with 3 SUN workstations, 4 PCs, 2 printers, phones, a copy machine and a fax. The forecasters will have available both the large set of data especially designed for MAP-SOP and the routine analysis and forecast tools from the Austrian weather services ACG and ZAMG.
All MOC-forecasters coming from different parts of the Alps, from the U.S. and Canada are members of the Forecaster Working Group. Founded in 1996 this group has worked hard to prepare for the SOP (MAP seasons, forecaster handbook, meteorological checklist, list of parameters for MAP-designed NWP models, working schedules etc.). About 25 forecasters will do their shifts in the FO. The Forecaster office will be open from 03:00 to 19:00 UTC, longer hours upon request.
As the members of the Forecaster Working Group come from different countries and weather services it was necessary to develop procedures of cooperation, to initiate an exchange of know-how and to share operational forecasting methods adapted to MAP-related meteorological phenomena. Therefore a joint activity for monitoring and documenting MAP relevant meteorological situations occurring during the extended MAP season (June to November, 1996 to 1998) was initiated. In Fall 1998 the Forecaster Working Group was authorised to suggest test runs of the MAP experimental NWP MC2 and of Meteosat 6 - Rapid Scans by Eumetsat and the MAP season was extended to the start of the SOP on September 7, 1999.
In order to ensure a uniformly high standard of forecasting knowledge and skills for the entire MAP area a meteorological handbook was compiled on the basis of contributions from forecasters with excellent knowledge of MAP phenomena relevant for their area of experience. These contributions are distilled into a ‘checklist’ which will serve as meteorological guideline for the work during the SOP. Additionally this handbook is intended to become a unique collection of meteorological knowledge and experience for different parts of the Alpine region.
The basic requirement to be satisfied by the forecasters is to give support for mission planning and decision making by covering all forecast ranges from medium range (48-120h), short range (24-48h), very short range (6-24h), nowcasting (0-6h) to real-time mission support. During missions a team formed by a forecaster and a ground-based mission scientist shall provide real-time guidance to the aircraft and radar teams.
Only a restricted number of persons will have access to the FO. For core briefings, scientific director, operations director, principle investigators, MOC-personnel and forecasters will be in the forecast office. The main briefing will take place in the student hostel. This 'briefing room' is also intended to be a general information- and communication centre. Therefore one of the forecasters/student assistants will be available in the briefing room during fixed hours.
In principle all data and products offered to the forecasters in their office are available for scientists in the briefing room.
Synops, real-time hourly surface data from automatic stations: (I, CH, A), metars, radiosoundings both in GTS- and in high-resolution, radar images (Austrian Network & European Composite, National Composites of F, I, CH, D, Alpine Composite by DLR), Lightning Detecting Systems, windprofiler (CWINDE, Payerne, Vienna, Innsbruck), objective analysis schemes (VERA, LAPS).
A large number of forecast charts were designed especially for MAP. The list of meteorological parameters, the time steps, the location of vertical sections etc. have been discussed exhaustively by scientists and forecasters. As no interactive use of the NWP products is possible, a large number of potentially interesting charts will be produced every day (about 800(!) charts per model-run). Besides the ECMWF global model, the following LAMs will be available for MAP- SOP: Swiss Model, Local Model of DWD, and ALADIN/LACE. A special support for forecasters and scientists will be given by the output of the MC2 model, the experimental NWP of MAP.
All METEOSAT 7 products (IR, WV, VIS) and NOAA IR / VIS images will be available in real time in the forecast office and in the briefing room. EUMETSAT will provide ‘Rapid Scans’ from Meteosat 6, satellite images with a reduced domain but higher resolution in time.
