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. In the European Alps, the public is provided with regional avalancheforecasts, issued by about 30 forecast centers throughout the winter,covering a spatially contiguous area. A key element in these forecasts is thecommunication of avalanche danger according to the five-level, ordinalEuropean Avalanche Danger Scale (EADS). Consistency in the application of theavalanche danger levels by the individual forecast centers is essential toavoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations by users, particularly thoseutilizing bulletins issued by different forecast centers. As the quality ofavalanche forecasts is difficult to verify, due to the categorical nature ofthe EADS, we investigated forecast goodness by focusing on spatialconsistency and bias, exploring real forecast danger levels from four winterseasons (477 forecast days). We describe the operational constraintsassociated with the production and communication of the avalanche bulletins,and we propose a methodology to quantitatively explore spatial consistencyand bias. We note that the forecast danger level agreed significantly lessoften when compared across national and forecast center boundaries (about60 %) than within forecast center boundaries (about 90 %).Furthermore, several forecast centers showed significant systematicdifferences in terms of more frequently using lower (or higher) danger levelsthan their neighbors. Discrepancies seemed to be greatest when analyzing theproportion of forecasts with danger level 4 – high and 5 – very high. Thesize of the warning regions, the smallest geographically clearly specifiedareas underlying the forecast products, differed considerably betweenforecast centers. Region size also had a significant impact on all summarystatistics and is a key parameter influencing the issued danger level, but italso limits the communication of spatial variations in the danger level.Operational constraints in the production and communication of avalancheforecasts and variation in the ways the EADS is interpreted locally maycontribute to inconsistencies and may be potential sources formisinterpretation by forecast users. All these issues highlight the need tofurther harmonize the forecast production process and the way avalanchehazard is communicated to increase consistency and hence facilitatecross-border forecast interpretation by traveling users.

Spatial consistency and bias in avalanche forecasts – a case study in the European Alps