Talk:Climate Forecast Applications Network

Pre speedy deletion, Notability
Hey Yae4! Awesome work here. I don't have time now, but I'll contribute to this page later this week. Two thoughts: 1) A lot of this material could probably go on the main Judith Curry page, maybe in a something similar to the "Educational Philosophy" section from the GA-rated Heather_Knight_(educator) article. (Maybe research views? Research perspective? Scientific views?) 2) I am a little worried that this page doesn't yet meet notability guidelines, and that it might be in danger of deletion once it goes to mainspace. I've used quite a few of the sources you're referencing right now, and to my knowledge CFAN gets a one-line mention in them. Do you know if any of them is entirely (or mostly) about CFAN? Notability for organizations requires that an organization "has been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." You're doing quite a bit of good work, and I just want to make sure it stays up once the draft is done. Finally, please let me know if there's anything in particular you'd appreciate help on for this draft. Jlevi (talk) 14:52, 29 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Additionally, I notice a few phys.org sources used. Note that it isn't usually recommended (Potentially_unreliable_sources). However, it should be relatively easy to find the original versions of the articles. Jlevi (talk) 18:39, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I felt there was sufficient coverage to justify moving it to article space already. You could help by doing an infobox, and expanding summaries of the book and scholar/journal sources, or adding more; there were numerous scholar/journal "hits" for CFAN, Climate Forecast Application Network, or Climate Forecast ApplicationS Network searches. Maybe try to summarize some more details of methods or tools, then organize the article into different sections. Phys.org does say "It also produces some science journalism," but in this case it was an AP article, which could be found numerous places; and a GA Tech article; so I added some of those as sources too. Thanks for the "red link," prompting the article. -- Yae4 (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! And I'll do some of your suggestions. But is there any page that talk about CFAR specifically? One-line mentions don't really work, and most of these pages seem to be just one-line bits about it. Jlevi (talk) 22:21, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm assuming "CFAR" was a typo. How about significant coverage in Books? Much more details on company methods, etc. could be excerpted from these books, but currently the middle paragraph in Background section just has snippets as placeholders:


 * Global Flood Hazard: Applications in Modeling, Mapping, and Forecasting, page 120, has at least a long paragraph, highlighting CFAN as a "notable example."


 * Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change has an entire section 9.2 Institutional Arrangements for Probabilistic Forecasts, pages 170-172, as well as an acknowlegement on page 182.


 * Flood Forecasting: A Global Perspective, Page 423 for CFAN lists 3 pages, 401-403.


 * Monitoring and Prediction of Tropical Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and ..., page 423, Index for Climate Forecast Applications Network lists 10 pages: 139-148, but only a couple pages are available for preview on G66gle.

-- Yae4 (talk) 11:43, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Yeah, those look like good options! Notability concerns assuaged ✔ Jlevi (talk) 20:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion review
Linking the discussion for future reference. -- Yae4 (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Original research?
So, in addition to my notability concerns, I notice what looks like original research in a few places. For instance, the first sentence of the background is, "The project that launched CFAN was Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh (CFAB)." The referenced paper does mention Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh within the document, and some of the citations are links to CFAN. However, I have not been able to justification for the statement in the paper itself.

Am I missing the justification? If I am, then what page is it on? If justification for the statement DOES appear in the paper, then I recommend adding a page number. If justification DOES NOT appear directly in the paper, then modification must occur.

Jlevi (talk) 12:48, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The paragraph (starting with "The project that launched CFAN...") was copied from Peter J. Webster. It has been like that without much change since originally added in 2017.


 * The first sentence is not WP:OR. "To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented." Here goes...


 * From WP:PRIMARYCARE: "An article about a business: The organization's own website is an acceptable (although possibly incomplete) primary‡ source for information about what the company says about itself and for most basic facts about its history, products, employees, finances, and facilities. It is not likely to be an acceptable source for most claims about how it or its products compare to similar companies and their products..."


 * So CFAN primary source is acceptable for basic facts such as its history. Side Note: The article "lead" statement is already a watered down rewrite from the beginning of their about. Re: CFAB, they say,

"Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh (CFAB):... With funding from USAID and CARE, CFAN developed an extended-range probabilistic flood forecasting system for the Ganges and Brahmaputra (on time scales from days to 6 months) to predict the probability that river water level heights will exceed critical levels. The CFAB project began in 1999, and the flood forecast system became operational in 2003..."


 * Note: the "link" at the end of that paragraph goes to a copy of the same November 2010 American Meteorological Society published article. This published article says (among many many other details), on Page 1496 or 4 of 22:

The catastrophic Bangladesh flooding in 1998 prompted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID-OFDA) to fund an exploratory project Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh (CFAB); http://cfab2.eas.gatech.edu). The primary goal of CFAB was to provide advanced warning of flooding in Bangladesh on daily to seasonal timescales...

CFAB developed an international consortium led by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Note 1) in collabora- tion with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)...
 * -- Yae4 (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Maybe I should be more clear about what I'm highlighting in that first sentence. The remark that is unclear is that CFAB was "the project that launched" CFAN. Based upon the sources provided, it seems obvious that CFAB was one of the big early projects of CFAN, but it remains unclear whether it was actually the first project. Right now, based upon what's being discussed, I think these the citations provides evidence based upon implication, but not based upon explicit statements in the source. Jlevi (talk) 20:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)


 * It's been changed to be more vague as you seem to be suggesting. Some of the G11 discussions suggestions have also been incorporated. Feel free to improve it more. -- Yae4 (talk) 21:15, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Updated, ready enough for Article space?
Objections, Opinions? -- Yae4 (talk) 18:42, 14 February 2020 (UTC)


 * 1. Several of the references in the History section don't seem relevant to the company (more so to involved individuals). For instance, it is mentioned: "In 2011, CFAN's President was interviewed about forecasts of Hurricane Irene by Seth Borenstein and Christine Armario. They wrote Irene was a type of storm off Africa that is simpler to forecast accurately." This seems to be a statement about the president, but the statement doesn't necessarily have significant relevance to the company.


 * 2. Excessive use of reprinted citations. Consider looking at Citation_overkill, which seems relevant here. Having more citations does not necessarily make the article stronger.


 * Those are the obvious points from my perspective, though other concerns might be evident to others. I'm not so familiar with minimal viable article requirements, so I'd defer to other on that. Jlevi (talk) 20:34, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

1. When a source says the person is with the company, then the person is speaking for the company, not just as an individual. Especially when the statements are regarding the company's business - weather and climate forecasts. A couple of the statements also support statements in the lead or Background sections. 2. For establishing and maintaining notability and due weight, it seems necessary (here at least) to include more rather than fewer citations. I think two-three is typical but could be wrong. -- Yae4 (talk) 22:03, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It still reads like a promotional piece to me. Better, but not great. If I have time tonight, I'll try to fix that.  I'm not sure you'll like the article though. Hobit (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2020 (UTC)