Overview
Explore the AI/ML sub-seasonal forecast portal to view all forecasts submitted to the AI Weather Quest. Participants are challenged with providing quintile-based probabilistic forecasts for near-surface air temperature, mean sea level pressure, and accumulated precipitation, targeting lead times of days 19 to 25 (week 3) and 26 to 32 (week 4). Use the guide below to navigate the portal and better understand its functionalities.
Latency of forecast display
Participants have four days to submit their forecasts (days 1 to 4). On day 5, all submitted forecasts are extracted and pushed to the forecast portal. In other words, forecasts initialised on a Thursday will not be viewable on the forecast portal until the succeeding Monday.
Navigating the home page
The homepage displays all forecast products submitted by participants. Each product corresponds to a specific variable from an individual model and is represented by a large thumbnail on the right. For instance, if the model ‘bestS2S’ submits forecasts for three variables, three separate products will appear.
Use the left-hand panel to filter products by:
- Parameters – The forecast variables
- Teams – The teams’ names
- Models – The models’ names
Navigating individual forecast products
Clicking on a forecast product opens all forecasts submitted to the AI Weather Quest for the corresponding model and variable combination. Each product is titled using the format:
teamname: modelname forecast variable quintile probabilities
For example: bestS2S: Model 1 Mean sea level pressure quintile probabilities.
Below each forecast visualisation, a brief description provides additional context about the forecast shown.
In the left-hand panel, you can refine the displayed map by selecting:
- Base time – The Thursday forecast initialisation date
- Valid time – The forecast lead time (either days 19 to 25 or 26 to 32)
- Area – The geographic region shown on the map
- Quintile interval – The forecasted quintile probability bands (< 20%, 20 <= x < 40%, 40 <= x < 60%, 60 <= x < 80%, x > 80%).
Next to each filter, the overview icon (four cyan blocks) allows you to display all corresponding forecasts within that selection filter simultaneously. For example, clicking the overview icon next to “Quintile interval” will show maps for each quintile range.
In addition, the forecast map includes several interactive features:
- Arrows – Switch between available lead times (weeks 3 and 4).
- Colorbar – Click the icon with horizontal lines (bottom right) to see the colour legend.
- Fullscreen – Expand the map with the enlarge icon (bottom right)
- Share – Use the top-right share icon to generate a link to the current view.
- Download – Click the box-arrow icon to download the forecast as .png or .pdf, or generate a URL to download the charts programmatically.
Finally, below the forecast visualisation you will find a brief description of the forecast shown.
Acknowledgements
The AI Weather Quest would like to thank all those in the Forecasts and Services Department who supported the development of this forecast portal. Special thanks go to Cihan Sahin for his comprehensive guidance on the portal creation process and for developing new code to facilitate the integration of new teams and products.