Separate Poster Introduction: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EMS2015/session/19945

The over-arching theme of the session will be the verification of high-impact, user-oriented forecasts. Submissions are invited especially on methodological approaches covering all forecast time ranges from nowcasts to climate projections. Verification themes to be addressed are: warnings and their impacts, weather events of high risk and with user relevance (e.g. in energy and transport sectors), multi-disciplinary topics (e.g. hydrology), communication of verification information to decision-makers, and uncertainty in observations influencing verification.

In addition, the verification session will cover two distinct sub-sessions:

(i) FROST-2014 Verification
Forecast and Research in the Olympics Sochi Testbed (FROST) was a Forecast and Research Demonstration Project (FDP/RDP) during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics under the auspices of the WMO World Weather Research Program (WWRP). The Olympics Games were held in a highly challenging meteorological forecasting environment over complex terrain, relatively close to the Black Sea coast. By default such framework addresses a significant end-user perspective by potential high-impact weather events influencing the execution of diverse winter sports events. Many international project participants ran their newly developed forecasting systems and provided output into a common FROST database to accommodate multifaceted verification studies. This sub-session gives FROST-2014 participants the opportunity to present their findings, and the wider meteorological community to learn about the overall outcome of this seminal international cooperation project.

(ii) Climate Forecast Verification
As follow-up to the successful, first-ever, climate verification session at the previous EMS conference (Prague, 2014), this sub-session will focus on the verification methodologies and results of extended range forecasts: from weekly to monthly, from seasonal to decadal , up to climate projections. Especially user-oriented (e.g. transport, agriculture, health) verification of high-risk events, as well as assessments of societal and economic impacts of long-range forecasts are encouraged.