Assessing the skill of the UK Hydrological Outlook. Issue 15 (18th November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boorman, David; Turner, Stephen
• Is Part Of: Hydrological sciences journal. Volume 64:Issue 15(2019)
• Page Start: 1932
• Page End: 1942
• Publication Date: 2019-11-18
• Subjects: forecasting -- prediction -- modelling -- rainfall -- river flow -- water resources; Hydrology -- Periodicals; 551.4805
• DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2019.1679375
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0262-6667

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The UK Hydrological Outlook (UKHO) is a seasonal forecast of future river flows and groundwater levels. The UKHO contains both presentations of outputs from models simulating future conditions and a high-level summary. The summary is produced by an expert panel of forecasters that considers the model outputs together with other recent hydrological and meteorological information. Whilst the skill and uncertainty of the individual models have been explored and published, this study sets out to establish the performance of the high-level summary, and presents such an assessment of the river flow forecasts at the 1-month timescale. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments are presented and compared with two naïve forecasting methods. The UKHO summary is found to have a similar Gerrity skill score to a "same as last month" forecast, an outcome that generates suggestions for improvements in how the different model outputs should be considered and presented in the high-level summary.