Bracknell Meteorological Office

Abstract

The Bracknell (U.K.) Meteorological Office runs a global weather model twice a day, providing the following data: surface and radiosonde; aircraft reports; and satellite soundings and wind. A human forecast is made every six hours. The model runs on a 150 km grid with 15 levels, and takes about four minutes on a Cyber-205. The standard output from the global products are wind, temperature, height, tropopause, and maximum wind. Various experiments have been conducted to see if short-range forecasters could improve on the upper-wind forecasts over the numerical model; the numerical model remains of paramount importance. Small-scale models are being run in the U.S. and the U.K. A fine-mesh model covers Europe and the Atlantic. A mesoscale model is under development. A great deal of verification work is done to see how good the models are.