Nowcasting encompasses a detailed description of the current weather along with forecasts during the next several hours. Most current nowcasting techniques, such as MAPLE (the McGill Algorithm for Prediction by Lagrangian Extrapolation) used in The Weather Network/Pelmorex Media Inc., are based on temporal extrapolation of radar and satellite imagery. Recent advances in observation networks, high-resolution numerical models, and in particular the data assimilation methods have great potentials to improve nowcasting accuracy.
