To allow people to better prepare for upcoming weather, the Meteorological Agency will next month begin offering temperature forecasts for 12 days instead of the current seven.
The forecasts will be published on the agency's official website every day at around 2:30 p.m. starting June 19. The change is aimed at allowing people to brace earlier for the possibility of heatstroke or heat exhaustion, and to assist in planning for farming and travel.
Longer-range weather forecasts will be made possible with the use of supercomputers introduced last year. New temperature forecast data will be available for roughly 70 locations across Japan.
In addition to the highest and lowest temperatures for the past seven days and upcoming seven days, new information will include such temperatures for eight to 12 days ahead projected on the basis of the average temperatures observed over the previous five days.
The use of colors will make it easy to tell when preparation is needed. Days with maximum and minimum temperatures significantly higher than usual will be shown in red, with those slightly higher in orange, those slightly lower in light blue, and those significantly lower in dark blue.