Perspectives on operational weather forecasting and warning in tropical Australia

Operational weather services in the Australian tropics have been influenced by such external pressures as tropical cyclone disasters, the growth of commercial aviation, the Second World War, and post-war development. Important post-war responses included the establishment of the Darwin Tropical Analysis Centre and the emergence of research interest in tropical meteorology. Our current public weather services focus on routine short to medium-range forecasts and severe weather warnings. The former are not well matched to scientific capabilities, and leave important forecasting time-scales unserviced. Future service developments are likely to see more attention directed to very short-range forecasts, and to the intra-seasonal and seasonal time-scales. Tropical cyclone warning accuracy in Australia can be expected to improve in the short to medium term, reaping the benefits that new remote sensing systems and improved surface observations will provide to cyclone tracking and intensity estimation, and from the operational use of improved objective prediction models. An important area for attention is the communication of cyclone warning information in ways that will optimise the socio-economic benefits of the warning system.