But last year, CI senior fellow V. Rao Kotamarthi and Argonne postdoctoral researcher Jiali Wang pushed the resolution limits of climate modeling further than ever before, completing the highest resolution forecast of North America ever conducted.
The I.B.M. researchers produce high-resolution forecasts twice a day, both for prospective customers and for their own analysis as they increase the power of their simulation models.
Private companies, particularly in America but in other parts of the world as well, have now stepped in to provide high-resolution forecasts for particular markets and industries.
Clifford F. Mass, a professor in the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, said that while high-resolution forecasts were improving, there was a potential for big mistakes.
In other words, the more detail, the better.Bridgeline, a company that operates gas pipelines in Louisiana, uses AccuWeather's high-resolution forecasts to monitor "severe weather events" in the Gulf of Mexico that could affect gas supply.
Instead of running a model 20 or 30 times, this involves comparing a new forecast with existing forecasts from other sources, such as government weather services, in order to assess the plausibility of its projections.Computing horsepower is not the only impediment to providing more accurate high-resolution forecasts.
IBM, for example, uses its own network of weather stations to evaluate the accuracy of its high-resolution forecasts.At the same time, the mathematical models are also being upgraded to cope with finer forecasting grids.
He likens high-resolution forecasting to a high-powered rifle.
I.B.M. is among the companies developing a high-resolution forecast system.
