Using ECMWF's Forecasts (UEF2022)

This talk will comes from the heart and mind of a forecaster who has worked for over 35 years trying to predict changeable and sometimes volatile weather coming in from the Atlantic and relaying forecasts and warnings to the public and emergency services. Evelyn will take us from her early days when the forecast for tomorrow was hugely uncertain and data came in painfully slowly on a roller type machine on electrostatic paper ….imagine there was no internet kids….through to the current sophisticated Ensemble high resolution local models and Monthly forecasts using ECMWF Global.
Evelyn is now Head of Forecasting at Met Éireann and chairs the EUMETNET Task Team on Storm Naming. She will explain the raison d'être for Storm Naming and the current state of play across Europe with all NMS’s now participating from Norway to Greece to Portugal. Iceland is unique as there just aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to name all the winter storms!
A question to the modelers: how do you convey actionable advice when you are very uncertain yourself about what could happen? Adopting the precautionary principle is another term for ‘the boy who cried wolf’ and is not acceptable to society. A small chance of a high impact event is easier to describe five days ahead than tomorrow and heres where the human forecasters step up as the trusted and authoritative voice of the wonderful meteorological community via, inter alia, TV, Radio, Podcasts, Web, App and Social Media.