FINECAST® Nowcasting System
Rapidly updated high-resolution meteorological analysis is key to accurate forecasting. Operational Doppler radar networks provide temporally and spatially high-resolution observations, but they are limited to radial wind and reflectivity. Furthermore, the crucial variables that provide the whole picture must be harvested from these very limited observations.
The core technology of FINECAST® uses observations at more than one-time levels. The model trajectory of a specified time window is fitted to the observations and meteorological analyses of observed and unobserved variables. The code is fully parallelized by a MPI (Multiple Processing Interface) to handle the computation demand of the 4DVar (Four dimensional variational data assimilation) scheme so that each analysis can be produced in just a few minutes with an update frequency of 10 minutes, meeting nowcasting requirements.
FINECAST® serves a wide range of meteorological applications, such as severe-weather nowcasting, wind-power prediction, and hazardous-chemical detection, to name only a few. The true value of the model is that it can produce these analyses in mere minutes, delivering timely results to decision makers, forecasters, and utility managers.