Met Office Forecasts of the European Storms of Autumn 2000
Sean Milton
Manager Model Diagnostics and Validation
NWP Division
U.K. Met Office
Abstract:
September, October and November 2000 were exceptional months in terms
of weather over the U.K. and Europe. This Autumn was the wettest in
England and Wales since records began in 1766, and many areas
experienced severe and repeated flooding and gale damage as Western
Europe was battered by a succession of deep Atlantic cyclones. In the
first part of this talk we give an overview of the synoptic/climatic
situation and review the performance of the Met Office NWP models in
predicting the extreme events during this period. This will include
the performance of the global model at predicting the large scale
synoptic development out to 6 days ahead and comparisons with global
models from other NWP centres. The performance of the UK-area model
will also be discussed, in particular the quantitative precipitation
forecasts (QPF's) out to 36 hours ahead. We focus on three noteable
events from the Autumn period (i) the Kent Sussex floods of 11-12
October, (ii) the 30th October Storm, and (iii) the 5-6 November
storm. In the second part of the talk a review of the Met Office plans
to develop NWP over the next 5 years will be presented.