Operational regional prediction

Summary Regional operational prediction requires the development, implementation and steady improvement of a modelling system which comprises different components like the data assimilation scheme, numerical forecast model, postprocessing and application modules as well as packages for monitoring, diagnostics and verification. The text highlights the impact of some of those components like lateral boundary conditions, data assimilation and statistical postprocessing on the quality of operational regional prediction systems and proposes some important research directions for an improvement of the systems from the operational point of view.With 14 Figures