What is "nowcasting"

n. (context meteorology English) The use or production of nowcasts.

The term Nowcasting is a contraction of 'now' and 'forecasting'. It is used in both economics and meteorology. See:

• Nowcasting (economics)
• Nowcasting (meteorology)
• Nowcasting (air quality)

Nowcasting is defined as the prediction of the present, the very near future and the very recent past in economics. The term is a contraction for now and forecasting and has been used for a long-time in meteorology. It has recently become popular in economics as standard measures used to assess the state of an economy, e.g., gross domestic product (GDP), are only determined after a long delay, and are even then subject to subsequent revisions. Nowcasting models have been applied in many institutions, in particular Central Banks, and the technique is used routinely to monitor the state of the economy in real time.

Nowcasting is weather forecasting on a very short term mesoscale period of up to 2 hours according to the World Meteorological Organization and up to six hours according to other authors in the field. This forecast is an extrapolation in time of known weather parameters, including those obtained by means of remote sensing, using techniques that take into account a possible evolution of the air mass. This type of forecast therefore includes details that cannot be solved by numerical weather prediction (NWP) models running over longer forecast periods.