Dear Reader,

There is in the human nature to search for its personal, as well as collective future. The aim of this search is to get more precise information—covering a period as long as possible—about the conditions determining life. In this effort, one adopted and is still adopting presumably all useful means. His interest in this subject is so strong, his desire to get information is so insatiable, that he does not even back away from the most dubious means. His unlimited endeavour can lead to dilettantism but sometimes, even though with hard work, brings up considerable results.

With the development of sciences, and especially in the field of natural sciences, man has reached remarkable results. Nowadays the present state of matter shows that we have at our disposal surprisingly reliable forecasts in many spheres of our daily life to begin with the environment till the economy. Concerning the customers' expectations towards data furnishing, obviously there are big differences in the branches of the various disciplines regarding reliability and the forecast length. The public's requirements are of high standard, and comparing these with our achievements, results are sometimes quite modest.

The articles of the present edition would like to inform the reader about the accomplished achievements in the field of weather forecasting, about the appearing difficulties and also, about the directions of the future progress. The contradiction which exists between the present level of development in atmospheric sciences and the huge amount of information to be processed every day is justifying especially the issue of the present publication. On one side the numerical weather prediction models have the capacity to run continually forecasts for at least ten days ahead on a scale of 10 to 50 kms, informing us on dozens of parameters, (hundreds of Mbytes daily). On the other side, the public is receiving a synthetised version through the media, where interesting details are lost. While the working capacity is able to deliver predicted data for every six hours on a regional scale, the public only receives daily forecasts for the territory of Hungary, because the transmission of information is limited in both time and space.

The experience shows that the weather and its changes have an impact on almost all domains of our everyday life. We would always like to know whether the weather is favourable for open-air work; to accomplish the timely steps in our work; or we simply would like to find out if the weather is favourable for the weekend excursion. You just have to remember on the floods and tornadoes that occurred in our country during the last six months, and their forecasts based on scientific as well as pseudo-scientific methods.

This present edition gives an overlook on these actual problems, the articles being written by expert specialists. The reader has the opportunity to get acquainted with instruments becoming more and more precise, the use of numerical forecast models; and about the role of the meteorologist to fit the parts together in this puzzle. We can enumerate a lot of scientific arguments in order to explain why we are not able to forecast the future weather more precisely and for an infinite period of time.

The authors, some of them could be familiar from the TV screens, are dealing with the different fields of our daily life where weather predictions might be useful; from the protection of the environment through the power economy, to the agriculture.

The problems disputed by the specialists also appear in this volume: how to present meteorological information in a user-friendly way and how to predict the outlines of future development. While reading these two main problems, do not forget to consider that we have entered a new age of meteorological forecasting, and the importance of this achievement is similar to the workout and introduction of the numerical weather operations. Our edition is dealing with the project of complete automation of forecasts.

The meteorologists' work is based on a vertical pattern. It is an organisation functioning on strict para-military regulations. The global observations, the broadcasting of data and their distribution to the public, and the archivation are the main fields of research. The lack of one of the elements or their low quality would make the functioning of the whole system impossible.

The "final assembly department" is the division for weather prediction, where the end products are processed by the forecaster. He is the specialist summarising the information issued to the customer. His working capacity is depending on subjective factors too. His efficiency is limited by his capacity for synthesis, his personal ability to process the received data, and the time having for processing.

The various steps of weather prediction are becoming more and more automated. No wonder that the "final assembly shop", the synoptist's work is to summarise an incredible amount of information, (at least 1 Gbyte daily in the Hungarian Meteorological Service). Obviously, the basic information is graphically represented and summarised by the processing system. However, who would be able to analyse simultaneously hundreds of different scales of the European region or of the Carpathian basin to answer coheretely thousands of questions emerging every hour?

Well, surely nobody could do that. Paradoxically, the more information we get, the more the situation is beyond control.

I wonder whether it is possible to automatise completely the forecasting process. Or is it necessary that the expert intervene in some other phases of the process? These questions are the main subjects of the specialists' debates.

No doubt that in the future the forecaster will need a larger computation background in order to be able to build the algorithms into his work. At some of the time scales, mainly in the nowcastings and warnings, the specialist has to give sudden, flexible reactions at every unpredictable "oscillation" of the atmosphere, which is a task hard to represent by algorithms. At the same time, the specialist is oppressed by the necessity of achieving development in the already existing systems. In a few countries, there are laboratories carrying out experimental work with partially automated forecasting programmes. The specialists have already started to evaluate the preliminary results. If their conclusions are favourable, the new results would basically change the future of the weather forecasting technology.

Concerning our technical basis, we are prepared to take steps in order to adopt this new technology task, taking into consideration our professional experience, a breakthrough is to be expected in the near future.

Thanking you for the shown interest and in the hope that our special edition—this late Christmas present—will be satisfying your expectations.

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