A method for forecasting visibility at Hindon

At present the approach to forecasting visibility is synoptic and personal experience of the weather forecaster. The month of December typically a winter month, is associated with poor visibility. Aviators require visibility forecast in terms of a definite quantitative value at a specific place in specific time frame. Therefore, in this study an attempt is made to develop a suitable model for forecasting visibility in December at a place Hindon near Delhi in a quantitative manner. In the development process of forecasting visibility, different approaches such as auto-regression, multiple regression, climatology and persistence have been attempted. The models are developed using seven years (1984-90) data of December. The model is evaluated with the independent data sets from the recent years 1994-95. It is found that climatology-persistence method provides better results as compared to the multiple regression and auto-regression methods. The developed model provided positive skill scores as high as 70% on development as well as independent data sets.