Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response

3. Forecasting and Communicating the Risk of Extreme Weather Events

Geoff Love and Michel Jarraud

World Meteorological Organization¹

Overview

This chapter analyzes the approaches being taken by those who provide public forecasts and warnings for extreme hydro-meteorological events. It notes that all forecasts have a degree of uncertainty about them and that meteorologists have developed a variety of methods for expressing this uncertainty. Weather forecasters have traditionally used qualifiers in their forecasts to express uncertainty consistent with guidelines developed by the World Meteorological Organization. In the domain of climate analysis and prediction, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has provided a framework for expressing ...