Towards operational optical turbulence forecast systems at different time scales

Abstract

In this contribution we apply to Paranal a technique successfully tested and implemented in the ALTA Center to support LBT observations permitting us to provide optical turbulence forecasts at time scales of 1 and 2 hours with unprecedent accuracies and with important gain with respect to the forecasts done with simple real-time measurements (method by persistence). We use an autoregressive method that takes into account real-time measurements and forecast performed with a mesoscale atmospherical model. Results obtained so far give an RMSE of 0.1” at 1h for the seeing and a probability to detect the seeing weaker than the first tertile (calculated on climatological scale) equal to 98%. In this study we extend the techniques to other astroclimatic parameters beside the seeing.