1. Headlines
The C-SRNWP Programme had been continued in 2009 based on the building blocks established in the first year of the programme's new stage. In practise these elements are the SRNWP Advisory Committee with two meetings per year (and with frequent email exchanges) and the eight Expert Teams ensuring the scientific cooperation between the five limited-area (LAM) Consortia of Europe. At the beginning of the year two new contributing members entered the programme officially: Bulgaria and Czech Republic. Later in the year Serbia joined EUMETNET and the C-SRNWP Programme. All the contribution fees were successfully collected until the end of the year. The most important event of the cooperation was the annual EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting, which was held in Greece. At the end of the year an initiative was launched to collect observational data from different European measuring stations for the validation of the land-surface schemes of the LAM Consortia models. The five LAM Consortia in Europe and the C-SRNWP members are shown in the figure below:
2. Status of programmatic targets
The main activity of the C-SRNWP programme is the scientific and technical (operational) coordination between the five LAM Consortia in Europe (ALADIN, COSMO, HIRLAM, LACE and Met Office). The coordination is ensured by the eight Expert Teams (data assimilation and use of observations; diagnostics, validation and verification; dynamics and lateral boundary coupling; link with applications; physical parameterization: upper air; predictability and EPS; surface and soil processes: model and data assimilation; system aspects) established last year and through the regular correspondence (including the two meetings per year) between the members of the SRNWP Advisory Committee. Recent information about the programme in general and about the workplans of the Expert Teams in particular can be found at the SRNWP webpage hosted by the Hungarian meteorological Service (srnwp.met.hu).
2.1. Expert Team issues
The Expert Teams based their activities as it was laid down by their respective workplans. The workplans are identifying such common areas of interest, where the different Consortia can work together. Certainly, at the moment there is stronger synergy between the ALADIN. LACE and HIRLAM group (due to their code cooperation) than the other two Consortia, however each Expert Team is making efforts to extend cooperation for the benefit of all the Consortia. The additional SRNWP-related programmes (Interoperability and Verification) are good examples for that (see more below). The Expert teams have also an important role to organise scientific inter-consortia meetings (for instance short range ensemble prediction workshop in Exeter, June, 2009; non-hydrostatic modelling workshop, Bad Orb, October) and Expert Team meetings (usually they are linked together). The Expert Teams have also important role in defining the scientific programme of the EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting (review talks, scientific sessions for instance). At the end of the year the Expert Team on "surface and soil processes (model and data assimilation)" initiated the observational data collection at various sites of Europe (Lindenberg in Germany, Capofiume in Italy, Cabauw in the Netherlands, Payerne in Switzerland, Toulouse in France and Sodankylä in Finland) for the thorough validation of the SRNWP models' surface schemes. The official letters for the concerned Directors were sent and all of them gave permission to start the collection and then the application of the observational information.
2.2 SRNWP Advisory Committee issues
The SRNWP Advisory Committee consists of the heads of the various European LAM Consortia. The SRNWP-I and SRNWP-V Programme Managers were invited to the meetings. The autumn meeting was also attended by the EIG EUMETNET Executive Director. The main issues of discussion of the Advisory Committee were as follows: scientific issues around the eight Expert Teams (including the two related programmes), long-term strategy of the C-SRNWP Programme, cooperation with the Academia and the universities, details of the EWGLAM/SRNWP annual meeting.
2.3 Links with the partners
The relation with the partners was ensured by keeping contact with the members' designated contact persons, who received regular (mostly email) information about the latest news of the Programme. As far as administrative matters are concerned three new contracts were drafted and signed during the year (Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Serbia) and all the invoices were submitted to the members. The contribution fees were fully collected during 2009.
2.4 Other SRNWP-related Programmes
There are two other programmes under the umbrella of SRNWP: SRNWP-I (Interoperability) and SRNWP-V (Verification). Both programmes are coordinated by Met Office (for SRNWP-I the interim Programme Manager is Glenn Greed and for the SRNWP-V Clive Wilson). The Interoperability Programme defined the standard exchange format (GRIB2) together with the list of parameters to be exchanged. It was agreed that the data will be exchanged in the original model grids together with the description of the model grid details. The necessary development work will be realised by each Consortia (therefore the "adaptor" softwares will be the integral parts of the Consortia modelling tools and will be maintained together with the other parts of the Consortia models). The major difficulty of the work is related to the treatment of the surface fields, therefore strong cooperation with the ET on surface is envisaged. Regarding SRNWP-V the data exchange had been already started and first very preliminary inter-comparison was realised. The inter-comparison results are going to be put under the EUMETNET Portal.
3. Communication and cooperation
The Programme Manager attended several meetings on behalf of the programme. On the one hand these meetings were scientific meetings of the different Consortia (for instance ALADIN-HIRLAM workshop or COSMO General Meeting) and SRNWP-meetings for the scientific exchange of all Consortia and on the other hand "cooperation meetings" with other EUMETNET programmes (for instance E-SAT - EUCOS Science Advisory Team - meeting) and with the Coordination Office (for instance PMs meeting).
Additionally some further steps were done as regards the cooperation with the university/academia researchers. A COST proposal (initiated by the university people about building stronger cooperation with the "operational" NWP experts including also links with climate modelling) was submitted, but refused (it is planned to be resubmitted in 2010). A proposal for the European Science Foundation was prepared and submitted about "Mesoscale Predictability of High-impact Weather Events" (EUROPredict). In the proposal the predictability of the convective scale weather events is addressed in a strong cooperation with European university experts. The project was unfortunately refused as well, but it is also planned for resubmission it in 2010.
4. Benefits Delivery
Numerical weather prediction is part of the basic infrastructure of the national (hydro)meteorological services. This infrastructure is essential for the forecasting duties of the Services including the public protection of life and property. The forecasting services are relying on those short-range limited area numerical weather prediction models (LAMs), which are developed in the multi-national LAM Consortia. Since the C-SRNWP Programme is ensuring the coordination between the European modelling groups, therefore it is of vital interest (although it is admittedly difficult to quantify in terms of objective figures) to pursue the C-SRNWP activities for the European Meteorological Infrastructure in general and for the weather services in particular.
5. Financial report
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6. Risks and issues
None to report.
7. Programme change requests
None to request.
8. Outlook for 2010
In 2010 the programme is going to be continued on the same basis (Expert Teams, Advisory Committee, annual meeting). Additionally it is planned to update the unsuccessful proposals, which were submitted earlier (COST-proposal and ESF project). The EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting will be organised in Exeter (autumn) with the help of the SRNWP Expert Teams. The Advisory Committee is going to propose an SRNWP roadmap for the Assembly and the Programme will take part in the definition of the observation strategy of EUMETNET.
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