中文摘要：

美国国家科学发展的指导机构国家研究顾问委员会（NRC）不久前发表了一份关于天气、气候和水文预报的不确定性的调研报告。报告强调了预报不确定性信息在终端用户应用气象预报作决策中的重要性,同时指出一个预报如果没有定量地估计它的不确定性,那么该预报是不完全的。该报告中文版的出版工作正在进行中,现藉此机会向读者综合地介绍一下预报不确定性的问题。文中首先讨论了预报不确定性的缘由以及应该如何来科学地对待它。然后介绍了要应对这一问题所要进行的一些具体措施和策略。最后,简要地介绍了美国气象界为此所做的一些努力和计划以供参考。通过上述讨论和介绍,希望引起更多的人对预报不确定性问题的重视并科学应对以更好地服务社会。

英文摘要：

Not long ago,the U.S.National Research Council（NRC） published a study report about the uncertainty in weather,climate and hydrological forecasts.The report emphasizes the importance of communicating uncertainties associated with these forecasts to users in their specific applications.Otherwise, without quantifying its uncertainty,a forecast is incomplete.The publishing of a Chinese translation of this book is currently under the way.At the moment before the Chinese version is released,this paper would like to take this occasion to contribute a comprehensive review as well as some discussions to readers, which cover the following four aspects：（1） Why is uncertainty in all hydrometeorological forecasts inherited to be intrinsic？（2） What general goals should be set to successfully deal with the uncertainty in solving real world problems？（3） To accomplish these goals,what efforts have to be made and coordinated within the entire weather-related enterprise including government,research community and industries or end-users.（4） Finally,the efforts and roadmaps planned so far by the American Meteorological Society and NOAA in dealing with the forecast uncertainty are briefly introduced for reference.Via this paper,it is hoped that more people will pay attention to the importance of communicating the forecast uncertainty and work toward reforming and improving weather-related forecasts and services to benefit the entire society.