Fronts

[joelanier]

Re: Addition of Fronts Actually, we studied the mathematics needed to formulate frontal positions back in school (FSU). The position of a front slopes back toward the cold air side as you gain altitude. The postion of the 850mb front or even at 500mb is not in the same place as the Surface front. In any case, it is mathematically possible to develop an algorithm that specifies the location of a front at various levels. I think we have enough computer power these days, and the ability of computers to learn, to be able to distinguish bad data from good data. At least you could position a front based on the pressure trace dip. One trick I did when working in the Pacific, was to take the 24 hr difference in (T + Td) plus wind shift, to ascertain frontal positions in mountainous terrain over China. So, yeah, Windy should be able to pull off automating frontal positions using real time data.
The question remains, will they have the desire to do that.

[Yves70]

@joelanier
Windy collects data from weather provider. They don’t do any calculation. They put in one place all data from IFS, GFS, etc... If there is somewhere an institute which can provide for free global front maps coming from their calculation, Windy could think to integrate potentially this map in their app,...

So far, front maps are available from a lot of weather national institutes, like IRM, MET, DWD, Meteo France,... They prepare them manually and then they propose an forecast of this map using models like DWD using ICON to forecast the front map evolution. Issue : starting point is done manually and it is a local front map, not global front map