Geoff Monk from the Mountain Weather Information Service will be giving an evening talk in Inverness on Wednesday 21 January.
The theme of the evening talk, organised by the Royal Meteological Society will be “Weather forecasting – how good have we got?”. The event is free and starts at 7pm in Room G20, University of the Highlands and Islands, 3 Longman Road, Inverness IV1 1SA.
Prior to the 1990’s weather forecasts were routinely produced using a scarcity of data, and forecasts beyond a few days were little more than (sometimes inspired) guesswork. This situation has since changed dramatically with vast amounts of observational data (much from satellite and radar) and weather forecast model data available to the forecaster. The talk will focus on how forecasters can best make use of primarily forecast model diagnostics, how good the data is, how forecasts can best be constructed (according to the requirements of the customers) and how a forecaster can still add value to the model data.
Geoff Monk spent 25 years in forecasting and research with the Met Office before joining a private weather forecasting company based in Galloway and then developing the Mountain Weather Information Service in 2002.