NCEP
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Whether you get your local weather forecast from the newspaper, television, or off the Internet, odds are that the National Centers for Environmental Prediction has had something to do with it. The NCEP or n - cep in governmentese, is a branch of the National Weather Service that comprises nine separate centers covering every conceivable aspect of weather forecasting - from zeroing in on tornadoes that last a couple of hours to analyzing climate trends that will play out over decades. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook.

NCEP provides timely, accurate and continually improving worldwide forecast guidance products. NCEP, a critical part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service, is the starting point for nearly all weather forecasts in the United States.

Perhaps the most central of NCEP's nine centers is the Environmental Modeling Center. This is the office that generates the numerical computer models that all meteorologists rely on in making their daily predictions. When your local forecast calls for the likelihood of rain to increase from 30 percent this afternoon to 70 percent tonight, those numbers originate in the guts of an NCEP supercomputer and are interpreted by the staff at the local Weather Service Office, or private forecasting company.

NCEP also focuses on special weather and climate goings-on at its Tropical Prediction Center, the Storm Prediction Center, which specializes in tornadoes and violent thunderstorms, and the Climate Prediction Center, which monitors and forecasts short-term climatic fluctuations as well as analyzing global climatic events like El Niño.

NCEP does not have a glossy marble headquarters on the Mall in Washington, D.C. And only rarely does its director, Dr. Louis Uccellini, deliver headline-making pronouncements. But even if most of us are not aware of it, this low-profile collection of government offices can touch each of our lives every single day.

Thanks to contributing writer David Laskin and for more information on NCEP, visit our website at weathernotebook.org. Thanks to Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive.

 
Related Links

Environmental Modeling Center
The EMC develops, improves and monitors data assimilation systems and models of the atmosphere, ocean and coupled system, using advanced methods developed internally as well as cooperatively with scientists from Universities, NOAA Laboratories and other government agencies, and the international scientific community.

Tropical Prediction Center
Latest Forecasts, Warnings, and Analyses

Storm Prediction Center
The SPC monitors and forecasts severe and non-severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and other hazardous weather phenomena across the conterminous U.S. -- 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Climate Prediction Center
Maintains a continuous watch on short-term climate fluctuations and to diagnose and predict them. These efforts are designed to assist agencies both inside and outside the federal government in coping with such climate related problems as food supply, energy allocation, and water resources.