There is a growing need for more systematic, robust, and comprehensive information on the value-add of climate services from both the demand and supply sides. There is a shortage of published value-add assessments that focus on the decision-making context, involve participatory or co-evaluation approaches, avoid over-simplification, and address both the quantitative (e.g., economic) and qualitative (e.g., social) values of climate services. The 12 case studies that formed the basis of the European Union-funded SECLI-FIRM project were co-designed by industrial and research partners in order to address these gaps while focusing on the use of tailored sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts in the energy and water industries. For eight of these case studies, it was possible to apply quantitative economic valuation methods: econometric modelling was used in five case studies while three case studies used a cost/loss (relative economic value) analysis and avoided costs. The case studies illustrated the challenges in attempting to produce quantitative estimates of the economic value-add of these forecasts. At the same time, many of them highlighted how practical value for users—transcending the actual economic value—can be enhanced; for example, through the provision of climate services as an extension to their current use of weather forecasts and with the visualisation tailored towards the user.
Laboratory measurements and numerical modeling at low Reynolds numbers (Reθ<7700) indicate the energy‐containing turbulence of boundary layer flows comprises coherent packets of hairpin vortices. Here direct measurements in the bottom boundary layer of the coastal ocean at higher Reynolds numbers (Reθ = 266,150) show tidal flows also contain packets of large vortices separated by periods of more quiescent conditions. The 1452 vortices recorded within a 20 min period are typically aligned along stream (∼8.0° from the mean flow direction) and inclined to the horizontal (∼27.0° from the seabed), with a mean period of occurrence of 4.3 s. These results lend three‐dimensional, in situ support to an interpretation of the coastal ocean bottom boundary layer as comprising coherent packets of hairpin vortices. This demonstrates a direct linkage from low Reynolds number experiments to higher Reynolds number flows, permitting fine‐scale details of particle transport and pollutant dispersion to be inferred from lower Reynolds number data.
Despite the promising capability of multimodal foundation models, their application to the generation of meteorological products and services remains nascent. To accelerate aspiration and adoption, we explore the novel use of a vision language model for writing the iconic Shipping Forecast text directly from video-encoded gridded weather data. These early results demonstrate promising scalable technological opportunities for enhancing production efficiency and service innovation within the weather enterprise and beyond.