55 nautical raster charts updated & 3 new charts added
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Saturday, February 16, 2019
Foils
The Gonet Monofoil is extremely fast and innovative; it is also beautiful!
Filmmaker Christophe Margot has followed his evolution, from the initial concept to record attempts, and made the video clip below, which we invite you to discover.
F50 on SailGP
The F50s from Australia, China, Great Britain, France, Japan and the United States lined up together on the water for the first time less than a week before the inaugural race in Sydney.
And in view of the images of the boats flying in training, the show looks sensational.
Friday, February 15, 2019
The Weather Service prepares to launch prediction model that many forecasters don’t trust
On Dec. 4, the FV3 model from the National Weather Service predicted a
major snowstorm for Washington five days later.
The storm missed the
city.
It is slated to become the Weather Service's flagship model in
March.
(TropicalTidBits.com)
From WashingtonPost by Jason Samenow
In a month, the National Weather Service plans to launch its “next generation” weather prediction model with the aim of “better, more timely forecasts.”
But many meteorologists familiar with the model fear it is unreliable.
The introduction of a model that forecasters lack confidence in matters, considering the enormous impact that weather has on the economy, valued at around $485 billion annually.
The Weather Service announced Wednesday that the model, known as the GFS-FV3 (FV3 stands for Finite Volume Cubed-Sphere dynamical core), is “tentatively” set to become the United States’ primary forecast model on March 20, pending tests.
It is an update to the current version of the GFS (Global Forecast System), popularly known as the American model, which has existed in various forms for more than 30 years.
The introduction of the FV3 is intended as the Weather Service’s next step toward building the best weather prediction model in the world, a stated priority of the Trump administration.
The current GFS model trails the European model in accuracy, and it has for many years, despite millions of dollars in congressional funding dating back to 2012, after Hurricane Sandy hit.
Numerous meteorologists who have experience using the FV3 worry it’s not ready for prime time and have been underwhelmed by its performance.
For months, its predictions have been publicly available, on an experimental basis for forecasters to evaluate.
When news broke about the Weather Service’s intention to make the FV3 the United States’ primary model, meteorologists unleashed a torrent of complaints and negative reviews on Twitter.
“It has not been good at all,” tweeted Doug Kammerer, chief meteorologist for NBC4 in Washington. “Scary that this is what we are about to go with on a permanent basis.”
“From what I have seen . . . not impressed,” tweeted Ryan Hanrahan, chief meteorologist for the NBC affiliate Hartford.
"I have no faith in the FV3 [for snowfall forecasts].” tweeted Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at Atmospheric Environmental Research known for his long-range prediction of the polar vortex.
Mike Smith, who recently retired as a senior vice president at AccuWeather, said the FV3 is not an improvement over the model it will replace.
“I don’t see any way in which FV3 provides better weather forecasts versus the current GFS,” he tweeted.
The model has tended to overpredict snowfall in the heavily populated Interstate 95 corridor in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, setting off false alarms in a region where forecasts are particularly consequential.
In Boston, which has seen just six inches of snow this winter, Eric Fisher, chief meteorologist for the CBS affiliate, remarked that the model had predicted “multiple” 30-inch snowfalls.
Here in Washington, we have documented multiple cases in which its snowfall forecasts several days into the future have been erroneously high.
On Monday, the FV3 was predicting double-digit totals for a storm on Saturday in the Washington region, and it now calls for little snow.
FV3 model snow forecast for Mid-Atlantic and Northeast through Saturday
issued on Tuesday.
It predicted over 10 inches for Washington, and
current forecasts are now for little or no accumulation.
(TropicalTidBits.com)
Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, has traced the problems in its snowfall forecasts to predicting temperatures “far too cold in the lower atmosphere” more than a few days into the future.
“One impact of this cold bias is the production of too much snow at low levels — a problem seen consistently around the country,” Mass said in an email.
He called the problem “very serious and very large.”
A concern is that if forecasters cannot rely on the FV3, they will be left to rely only on the European model for their predictions without a credible alternative for comparisons.
And they’ll also have to pay large fees for the European model data.
Whereas model data from the Weather Service is free, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which produces the European model, charges for access.
But there is an alternative perspective, which is that forecasters will just need to adjust to the new model and learn to account for its biases.
That is, a little short-term pain is worth the long-term potential benefits as the model improves.
“One can think of the new model as a brand new 2019 automobile replacing your old, trusty grocery getter,” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist specializing in modeling who helps operate the website weathermodels.com, said in an email.
“The current GFS model has been adjusted and fine-tuned to squeeze out the best performance possible, but it has reached its time for retirement. . . . Meteorologists will need to adjust their seat belts for the next several months as they get used to the new system.”
The Weather Service stands strongly behind the model.
Its director, Louis Uccellini, said the model underwent “rigorous and unprecedented testing and validation” over three separate summers, winters and hurricane seasons.
“The scientific and performance evaluation over the past year shows that the new dynamic core provides results equal to or better than the current global model in many measures, although additional improvements are still needed,” he wrote in a statement.
“This upgrade to the GFS establishes the foundation to enable those advancements in the future as we improve data quality control, data assimilation, physics and other upgrades to the model.”
Meteorologists outside the Weather Service do not doubt that, in the long run, the FV3 can improve and help the United States make strides in weather prediction.
“As an optimist, I see the ‘American model’ trending in the right direction and am willing to see how it further evolves,” wrote Marshall Shepherd, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia, in a commentary at Forbes.
The Weather Service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently entered an agreement with the National Center for Atmospheric Research to increase collaboration between forecasters and researchers in improving forecast modeling.
In addition, President Trump recently signed into law the Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act Reauthorization, which establishes the NOAA Earth Prediction Innovation Center, aimed at further enhancing prediction capabilities.
But even while NOAA develops relationships and infrastructure to improve the Weather Service’s modeling, the question remains whether the FV3 can meet the forecasting needs of the moment.
Until the problems identified are addressed, its introduction could represent a step back in U.S. weather prediction despite a well-intended effort to leap forward.
Links :
- WP : The new American weather model shone during Hurricane Lane / IBM announces high-resolution global weather forecast model / Surprise! The American weather model had the best forecasts for Hurricane Florence. / The Weather Service just took a critical first step in creating a new U.S. forecasting model / Trump administration official says it’s a ‘top priority’ to improve U.S. weather forecasting model
- The Weather Channel : Hurricane Preparedness Made Vulnerable by Ongoing Government ...
- Forbes : Euro Vs. GFS: The Weather Model Wars Take A New Turn In March
- R&D Mag : NOAA and NCAR Partner on New, State-of-the-Art US Modeling ...
- BusinessInsider : The US government shutdown is preventing scientists from improving ...
- ARS Technica :NOAA is about to make some big changes to its global weather model
- Mother Nature Network : How well can we predict a hurricane's punch?
- Time : The US Desperately Needs a Better Way to Predict Storms. One ...
- CityLab : To Track a Hurricane
- CNN : US more vulnerable to the next hurricane season and other extreme ...
- GeoGraage blog : The new American weather model shone during ... / The weather master / Comparing forecast models for Irma / NOAA's premier forecast model goes 4-D / How forecast models can lead to bad forecasts
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Rising seas: to keep humans safe, let nature shape the coast
Coastal erosion at Skipsea, East Yorkshire, UK.
From The Conversation by Iris Möller
Even under the most conservative climate change scenarios, sea levels 30cm higher than at present seem all but certain on much of the UK’s coast by the end of this century.
Depending on emission scenarios, sea levels one metre higher than at present by 2100 are also plausible.
The knee-jerk reaction to sea level rise has traditionally been to maintain the shoreline’s position at all cost, by building new flood defence structures or upgrading old ones.
More than US$10 billion per year is already spent worldwide on “grey” infrastructure such as concrete walls and levies to protect against coastal flooding.
Equally large are the costs incurred when coastal defences fail.
The United Nations has called on governments to relocate public facilities and infrastructure from flood-prone areas, while the UK Climate Change Committee has urged the government to “set out how and when the hard choices that have to be made on the coast are going to happen”.
‘Grey’ sea defences cost a lot to build and maintain and the concrete they’re often made from is a source of atmospheric carbon.
Letting nature decide
The traditional approach of “grey” engineered sea defences locks society into ever increasing costs of replacement and maintenance.
The alternatives are “nature-based solutions” to coastal flooding and erosion, which work with natural processes to reduce flood risk and incorporate ecosystems into flood defence.
Rather than seeing the coast as a static line, these alternatives rethink the coastlines as zones with valuable habitats such as beaches, dunes and wetlands that act as carbon stores, places for recreation and natural buffers against the waves.
Schemes such as the Wild Coast Project at Wallasea on the UK’s east coast have restored salt marshes where land had been reclaimed for agriculture years earlier.
The tide and waves now regenerate salt marsh where it had been embanked and drained.
If designed well, such schemes create new habitat which can reduce the height and intensity of storm surges and lower flood risk.
This technique for managing sea level rise can be thought of as allowing nature the space to create new coastal habitats within well-defined boundaries, akin to flooding a “sandpit”.
In this sandpit, enough coastal space is vacated by humans to give natural processes room to respond to sea level rise by creating new wetlands further inland where once the terrain was dry.
Coastal wetlands store carbon and act as natural buffers to storm surges.
While such interventions do not enable full control over water levels and waves, they are designed to keep them at a safe distance from humans.
Nature may be allowed to have some freedom to “play in the sandpit” created for it and people may not care what type of salt marsh or mudflat forms at Wallasea.
But, as with “grey” infrastructure, humans ultimately build the sandpit by setting its boundaries.
The future of the world’s coastlines, however, is uncertain as the coast is inherently dynamic.
Every wave and tide shapes the coast such that it determines how the next wave and tide can shape it.
Though people may not notice it, the coast and the habitats which line it are never fixed and in fact change a great deal over a single human lifetime.
People may create pockets of space for nature and think they are in control when in fact humans never were and it is doubtful they ever can be.
Observing nature’s sandpit
This is amply illustrated by the freshwater grazing marshes at Blakeney in Norfolk, on the UK’s east coast, where embankments were breached during the 2013 storm surge.
A storm surge at sea forced salt water through an embankment into the Blakeney Freshes nature reserve, a unique freshwater wetland.
Though unintended, salt water flooding of embanked areas like the Freshes can create a new ecosystem there and prevent flood waters from rising in adjacent areas, where people would have come to harm.
The Blakeney Freshes illustrate the importance of allowing sufficient space for nature to decide the boundaries of its “sandpit”.
The more space given to it and the wider the buffer zone of coastal landforms, the lower the risk of flooding to areas that lie further inland.
As with weather forecasts, predicting how complex natural processes will interact at the coast is difficult – certainly over years and decades.
It is time people stopped pretending that nature can be controlled at all, whether through “grey” or “green” engineering schemes.
The best option is to watch and learn.
Satellite technology has made is possible to track coastal change from space.
The means for monitoring exist, with ever-improving measurement technology, data transmission and high-resolution satellite imagery, such as the European Commission’s Copernicus programme.
Responding to sea level rise may be as simple as allowing space for the flow of water and sediment during extreme events.
Society can do so by relinquishing the need to control the process and restricting development near the coast, creating areas that nature can “claim” with whatever habitat it wishes to “build” there.
As a salt marsh turns into a tidal flat, a freshwater field into a salty lagoon, there is the opportunity to stand back, watch and learn to better understand how and why those changes happen and how people can benefit from change rather than fight a losing battle to prevent it.
Links :
- The Conversation : Barriers, canals and fake islands: how we can save cities from rising sea levels / Barriers, canals and fake islands: how we can save cities from rising sea levels / The sea isn’t actually ‘level’: why rising oceans will hit some cities more than others / How Europe’s coastal cities can cope with rising sea levels
- Islands'weekley : Working with nature to safeguard against storm damage
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