US Patent 7016784 Method and system for producing a weather forecast

A method of generating short-, medium-range and seasonal-timescale weather or climate forecasts by running an ensemble of computer models on a distributed computing system or network. Individual model integrations are interrogated to select those that most closely ressemble observed conditions in the present and recent past and the forecast based on a weighted average of future predictions based on this subset of the ensemble. The selection criteria determining which models are deemed to fit the observations most closely may be adjusted to optimize the use of observations in forecasting specific climate variables or geographic regions in order to develop forcasts tailored to particular applications.