Realizing User-Relevant Conceptual Model for the Ski Jump Venue of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

Realizing User-Relevant Conceptual Model for the Ski Jump Venue of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

As was the case for most other Olympic competitions, providing weather guidance for the ski jump and Nordic combined events involved its own set of unique challenges. The extent of these challenges was brought to light before the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics during a series of outflow wind events...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pure and applied geophysics Vol. 171; no. 1-2; pp. 185 - 207
Main Authors: Teakles, Andrew, Mo, Ruping, Dierking, Carl F., Emond, Chris, Smith, Trevor, McLennan, Neil, Joe, Paul I.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel Springer Basel 2014
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Climatology
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Geophysics/Geodesy
Mathematical models
Meteorology
Mountains
Nowcasting
Olympic Games
Race
Ski jumps
Skiing
Snow
Weather
Weather forecasting
Winter
Vancouver British Columbia Canada
Canada
Upslope Wind
Gravity Wave
Internal Gravity Wave
Sonic Anemometer
Morning Transition
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Summary:As was the case for most other Olympic competitions, providing weather guidance for the ski jump and Nordic combined events involved its own set of unique challenges. The extent of these challenges was brought to light before the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics during a series of outflow wind events in the 2008/2009 winter season. The interactions with the race officials during the difficult race conditions brought on by the outflows provided a new perspective on the service delivery requirements for the upcoming Olympic Games. In particular, the turbulent nature of the winds and its impact on the ski jump practice events that season highlighted the need of race officials for nowcasting advice at very short time scales (from 2 min to 1 h) and forecast products tailored to their decision-making process. These realizations resulted in last minute modifications to the monitoring strategy leading up to the Olympic Games and required forecasters’ conceptual models for flow within the Callaghan Valley to be downscaled further to reflect the evolution of turbulence at the ski jump site. The SNOW-V10 (Science of Nowcasting Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010) team provided support for these efforts by supplying diagnostic case analyses of important events using numerical weather data and by enhancing the real-time monitoring capabilities at the ski jump venue.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0033-4553
1420-9136
DOI:10.1007/s00024-012-0544-y