{"id":4160,"date":"2017-04-07T08:15:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/?p=4160"},"modified":"2017-04-07T13:02:36","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T18:02:36","slug":"probabilistic-hazard-information-experiment-completes-second-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/2017\/04\/probabilistic-hazard-information-experiment-completes-second-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Probabilistic Hazard Information experiment completes second week"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>The NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed<\/a>, <\/span>\u00a0a joint project of the National Weather Service and the National Severe Storms Laboratory, <\/span>is buzzing with activity again as the Experimental Warning Program focuses on its second of three years of testing probabilistic hazards with Hazard Services software. The objective is to improve severe weather warnings.<\/span><\/p>\n

During severe storms, NOAA National Weather Service forecasters draw what is commonly referred to as a polygon around the storm to create warnings, said Gabe Garfield, National Weather Service HWT liaison and researcher with the University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we issue warnings at the NWS it shows up as a polygon box,\u201d Garfield said. \u201cWhen a tornado passes, you\u2019re still in the box and you may be unsure if you can leave your shelter. That\u2019s an issue. Everywhere within the polygon has equal warning even though it\u2019s not equally probable everyone is getting that severe weather.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One focus of the EWP\u2019s <\/a>annual Spring Experiment is the Hazard Services \u2013 Probabilistic Hazard Information experiment, HS-PHI. The testbed\u00a0allows users to test technologies and methods while providing input to see if it is ready to be implemented in forecast offices. The HS-PHI experiment is designed to test forecasters\u2019 ability to provide probabilistic information about severe storms utilizing new software that is being designed to \u00a0be used in the future by the NWS.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This experiment is part of the National Severe Storm Laboratory\u2019s Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats<\/a>, FACETs, an initiative aimed at improving the communication of hail, wind, and tornado hazards to save lives and property. \u00a0Instead of a single polygon, in the FACETs paradigm forecasters would create probabilistic hazard information \u201cplumes.\u201d New types of severe weather warnings can be derived from the plumes. which new types of severe weather warnings can be derived. \u00a0These include the traditional warnings that the public receives today, to special warnings for specific users that have a lower tolerance to severe weather and require longer lead times to take action.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cImagine you\u2019re in a storm and the probability of severe weather at the center of the storm is 100 percent,\u201d Garfield said. \u201cThere\u2019s a circle around that 100 percent area but right outside there, it is 90 percent likely in the direction the storm is moving and then further out it may go down to 50 percent as it gets further away because we don\u2019t know if it will weaken.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As the storm moves, the circle around it moves, too. When that circle moves away from a location, \u00a0to know when the storm has passed over their location and they are able to come out of shelter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, when the forecaster issued a polygon, the storm may change direction and the forecaster did not have any mechanism to update that without creating some confusion,\u201d Garfield said. \u201cBut, with the probabilistic hazard information plumes, we can actually have that information and modify the plumes in real-time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For officials with responsibility for weather sensitive populations, such as festival organizers and hospitals, this means more lead time when severe storms threaten and better information to use in planning for severe storms.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole idea is to provide as much information as possible,\u201d Garfield said. The purpose of HS-PHI is to develop and test a tool forecasters can use to convey the threat. The first version of this prototype was evaluated in the HWT in 2014. \u00a0The features of the prototype have been incorporated into the NWS version, and testing of this operational version, HS-PHI, is in its second year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs you might imagine, if you have one of the plumes, it would be really hard to always manually draw those probabilities in real-time, particularly if you have several severe storms going on at once,\u201d Garfield said. \u201cYou won\u2019t have enough time to manually resize all of these swaths. They\u2019ve been trying to figure out the best machine automation versus human interaction. What\u2019s the best algorithm used along with how much should humans actually tweak in the system?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The EWP is testing experimental methods for improving the communication of severe weather threats, such as hail, wind, and tornadoes, using new software designed for the computer workstations that NWS meteorologists use today to forecast the weather. <\/span><\/p>\n

This year, the HS-PHI Experiment is testing the probabilistic hazard information concept in a way that simulates how NWS forecasters would actually use it, within the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) software used by the NWS. NWS forecasters and human factors experts will evaluate the software design using several severe weather scenarios.<\/span><\/p>\n

HS-PHI was developed by the National Severe Storms Laboratory with the National Weather Service and OAR\u2019s Earth System Research Lab<\/a>, and is in its second year of evaluation.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more information, visit<\/span> https:\/\/hwt.nssl.noaa.gov\/<\/span><\/a> and http:\/\/www.nssl.noaa.gov\/projects\/facets\/.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
HWT EWP spring experiment HS-PHI in April 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed, \u00a0a joint project of the National Weather Service and the National Severe Storms Laboratory, is buzzing with activity again as the Experimental Warning Program focuses on its second of three\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":4162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7,12],"tags":[171,567,189,565,347,566,429],"class_list":["post-4160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-people","category-research-news","tag-hazardous-weather-testbed","tag-hs-phi","tag-hwt","tag-noaa-nssl","tag-nws","tag-oar-earth-system-research-lab","tag-severe-storms"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}