Forecast verification

Forecast verification is a subfield of the climate, atmospheric and ocean sciences dealing with validating, verifying and determining the predictive power of prognostic model forecasts. Because of the complexity of these models, forecast verification goes a good deal beyond simple measures of statistical association or mean error calculations. Forecast verification is a subfield of the climate, atmospheric and ocean sciences dealing with validating, verifying and determining the predictive power of prognostic model forecasts. Because of the complexity of these models, forecast verification goes a good deal beyond simple measures of statistical association or mean error calculations. To determine the value of a forecast, we need to measure it against some baseline, or minimally accurate forecast. There are many types of forecast that, while producing impressive-looking skill scores, are nonetheless naive. A 'persistence' forecast can still rival even those of the most sophisticated models. An example is: 'What is the weather going to be like today? Same as it was yesterday.' This could be considered analogous to a 'control' experiment. Another example would be a climatological forecast: 'What is the weather going to be like today? The same as it was, on average, for all the previous days this time of year for the past 75 years'.