Objective prediction of warm season afternoon thunderstorms in northern Taiwan using a fuzzy logic approach

In addition, persistence of yesterday's convective storm activity contributed to improving today's forecast. Skill score comparison between the fuzzy algorithm and forecasters from the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau showed that for forecasting afternoon thunderstorms, the fuzzy logic algorithm outperformed the operational forecasters. This was the case for both the calibration and independent datasets.

There was a tendency for the forecasters to overforecast the number of afternoon thunderstorm days. The fuzzy logic algorithm is able to integrate the preconvective predictors and provide probability guidance for the prediction of afternoon thunderstorms under weak synoptic-scale conditions, and could be implemented in real-time operations as a forecaster aid.