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.
Fine-Scale Analysis and Nowcast System (FINECAST®)
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.