From 12 to 15th January 2009 the
EUMETSAT sponsored training project
EUMeTrain will organise an event week on the topic of Fog.
This event week will consist of several online sessions
dealing with the nowcasting of Fog with the use from geostationary and polar orbiting satellites.
The sessions will include a 30 minute presentation from an expert followed by a 10 minute discussion/break. After this discussion/break another 30 minutes is reserved for an NMS that will present how the nowcasting of Fog is handled within their institute. The target audience are the forecasters but anyone interested may take part.
These sessions will all be online using software called Centra. You do not need to install anything. On the day of the event you will receive an e-mail with a link and password. After clicking the link you will automatically enter the trainingsession. In case you miss out on one of these sessions note that all sessions will also be recorded and made available online soon after the event week.
Registration for the separate sessions in this training week is necessary and limited to 28 entries acting on first come, first serve. In addition, registrations for classroom/briefing sessions where more people listen in will have
a priority status!
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Monday 12th January 2009 |
Tuesday 13th January 2009 |
Wednesday 14th January 2009 |
Thursday 15th January 2009 |
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SESSION 2 |
SESSION 4 |
|
| 09.00 UTC |
|
Wilfried Jacobs (DWD) |
Paul de Valk (KNMI) |
|
| |
|
Slovenian Met Service |
KNMI |
|
| |
SESSION 1 |
SESSION 3 |
SESSION 5 |
SESSION 6 |
| 12.00 UTC |
Andreas Wirth (ZAMG) |
Jan Cermak (ETH) |
Herve Le Gleau (Meteo France) |
Anna Eronn (SMHI) |
| |
ZAMG |
Cro Control and
DHMZ |
IM |
FMI |
Session 1:
Andreas Wirth (ZAMG) will start the event week with a presentation about Fog and low stratus detection from SEVIRI and AVHRR images.
The presentation will deal with fog detection during night-time and day-time conditions. A recipe for daytime low cloud detection using several SEVIRI channels will be presented. A rough comparision between different low cloud detection products is planned. After this presentation a forecaster from ZAMG will takeover and give a presentation on the forecast experience of Fog.
Session 2:
Wilfried Jacobs (DWD) will talk about COST-722. A project in which 14 countries worked together from November 2001 to May 2007. After an inventory phase about the requirments of customers and forecasters a research and development phase followed during which advanced methods of very short range forecasts of fog, visibility and low clouds were developed. In this presentation an overview about activities and the most important results will be given. This presentation will be continued by a practical session by Uros Bergant from the Slovenian Meteorological Institute. Ljubljana airport is located in the basin, surrounded by high mountains with peaks over 2500 m. The formation of radiation fog at the airport is therefore very common, especially in the wintertime. This greatly impacts the safety and effectiveness of aviation traffic. The method used in Slovenia is based on statistical methods of interpreting observations and numerical weather prediction models output. In two methods, discriminant analysis and decision trees, they use three types of predictors - observations, MOS
and PPM. They do not use the results directly but rather as a guide for the real forecast.
Session 3:
Jan Cermak (ETH) will talk about the operational detection of fog and low stratus from satellite data. The research presented my may help the forecasters and application experts to get out of the traditional thinking "you cannot differentiate fog from low stratus with satellite images alone".
The talk will be followed by a practical session done by Stjepko Jancijev from the Croatian air-traffic control who will talk about "Products and techniques used on Zagreb airport for fog forecasting". This talk will be followed by a colleague from the Croatian Weather Service DHMZ who will talk about the use of MSG and the derived Fog products in the operational shifts.
Session 4:
Paul de Valk, researcher of the remote sensing department at KNMI, will talk about radiation fog and shallow fog. Radiation fog is barely observable from satellite observations.
Ground based observations are used to detect radiation fog. The satellite information is used to extrapolate the ground based point observations to a spatial distribution.
The forecaster is provided with information over fog favourable conditions deduced from observations and with information about visibility and ceiling.
The tool is developed to support the forecaster in his decisions with respect to fog. The session is followed by Jan Hemink from KNMI who will give a practical session on fog in respect to the Aviation Meteorologist with an example from visibility observations and forecast of Fog at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. On a satellite image low layered Stratus is often compared to Fog. To actually know if there is Fog underneath this Stratus cover you have to know about the visibility. A problem than arises: When do we talk about Fog? The criteria for this is that the visibility should be below 1000 metres, but how do we defines this criteria during day and night. The measurements of visibility in relation to the forecast will be a central point that is discussed in this presentation.
Session 5:
Herve Le Gléau (Meteo-France) will talk about the SAFNWC/MSG cloud type/height parameters. The algorithms, validation results, limitations and recent improvements (to be available to users in March 2009) will be presented and illustrated with low cloud/fog situations. An automatic use at Météo-France of the NWCSAF/MSG cloud type for fog risk mapping will also be shown. This session will be followed by Nuno Moreira from the Portugal who will talk on how IM deals with fog, with focus in summer fog in comparison to (our) winter fog.
Session 6:
Anna Eronn from the Swedish Hydrological and Meteorological Institute will talk about cold event Fog. The most common way to detect fog and low clouds at night is by using of the brightness temperature difference between IR10.8 and IR3.9. Unfortunately this method does not work in very cold winter situations because the IR3.9 channel is very noisy for cold scenes. Therefore it is recommended to replace the IR3.9 with the IR8.7 channel which is significantly less noisy for cold scenes. The theory behind this and practical examples will be presented. After the break the session is followed by Finnish Meteorological Institute presentation about fog forecasting process at FMI Aviation forecasting office.
