C-SRNWP Programme

 

Yearly Report for 2015 (January – December 2015)

 

 

 

 

Prepared by:              Balázs Szintai, C-SRNWP PM

                                  

                                   Hungarian Meteorological Service

                                   1024 Budapest, Kitaibel Pal utca 1, Hungary

 

 

For submission to:     EIG EUMETNET Secretariat

 

 

Summary:                  

 

 

 

Action required:          For information and comment

 

 

Distribution:                Public

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Date

Author(s)

Content

 

February 29, 2016

Balázs Szintai

First version

 

 

1.   Headlines

 

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 in 2008 and through the regular correspondence, including the annual meeting, between the members of the SRNWP Advisory Expert Team Committee, which consists of the consortia heads and the Expert Team chairs. Standing for the success of the EUMETNET programmatic targets, coordination with other Forecasting (SRNWP EPS II, ASIST) and Observation (EUCOS, OPERA) Projects/Activities is done. During 2015 the following coordination efforts have been made.

 

Coordination with OPERA for enhancing radar data assimilation

In coordination with the OPERA PM, the main challenges of volume data processing were presented by the C-SRNWP PM to the NWP community at the ALADIN-HIRLAM workshop (13-16 April) and at the Obs-SET meeting (15-17 April).

 

TAC2BUFR migration questionnaire

Following a question from the EUMETNET Observation program a questionnaire was prepared about the migration to BUFR data from Traditional Alphanumerical Codes (TAC) in NWP models and sent to the C-SRNWP Expert Team on Data Assimilation. As a summary: ECMWF is assimilating BUFR bulletins (from UK, Ireland and The Netherlands) since November 2014 and High-Resolution BUFR radiosoundings from Germany (the only country currently producing them). ECMWF maintains a wiki page with the developments on this topic: https://software.ecmwf.int/wiki/display/TCBUF/ and this link will be put in the project web page. UKMO assimilates fewer BUFR messages; Germany and Switzerland stressed that migration takes a lot of time, but BUFR assimilation is working for Synop data. Italy is using synop and radiosounding in BUFR; Russia is ready, but not yet assimilating BUFR; in LACE and ALADIN consortia assimilation of SYNOP in BUFR is going well but there are problems with radiosounding. In general, it was addressed the problem of simply converting TEMP bulletins into BUFR, which is not a good procedure.

 

Observation network design (support EUCOS, Obs-SET)

Input was prepared for the annual Obs-SET meeting on behalf of the SRNWP community. This included a survey on the SRNWP activities regarding the migration to BUFR data from Traditional Alphanumerical Codes (TAC). DFS (Degrees of Freedom for Signal) results as well as outcomes of Observing System Experiments from short-range NWP models have been collected to complement the picture shown by the global experiments. These show that Radar, SYNOP and AMDAR data have the most influence on the short range forecast quality though data assimilation.

 

Coordination with ECMWF regarding the extension of IFS EPS boundary conditions for very high resolution EPS systems

ECMWF started to set up the additional 06 and 18 UTC global ENS test runs during summer 2015. Currently, several NMSs are testing the data. If testing is successful, an operational implementation is planned for the end of 2015.

 

Preparation of the EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting

The EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting (5-8 October 2015) took place at RHMSS in Belgrade, Serbia. The programme was drafted by the C-SRNWP PM with the help of the Expert Team chairs (Data Assimilation, EPS, Link with Applications, Verification). Presentations are accessible through the C-SRNWP website: http://srnwp.met.hu/Annual_Meetings/2015/index.html
The special topic of this year was fog and visibility forecasting including the representation of aerosols. The meeting included the SRNWP business meeting, where the activities within the EUMETNET Forecasting Programme and within the C-SRNWP Project have been presented. Also during the SRNWP business meeting Slobodan Nickovic (RHMSS) gave a presentation about the new NWP consortium SEECOP. With the funding of WMO 12 South East European countries participated the EWGLAM meeting as observers and had the opportunity to shortly introduce their NWP related activities. Also, a separate meeting took place where the Forecasting Programme Manager, Dick Blaauboer gave and introduction about EUMETNET to the representatives of these observer countries.
Activities of the C-SRNWP Project were discussed after the main program at the SRNWP Advisory ET (AET) meeting.

 

SEECOP – new NWP consortium in Europe

The SEEVCCC-SRNWP cooperation has a new name: SEECOP (South East European Consortium for Operational weather Prediction). The possible cooperation and the involvement of SEECOP in the C-SRNWP project has been extensively discussed by AET. It has been decided that AET recommends the EUMETNET STAC to acknowledge SEECOP as a new NWP consortium in Europe. At the same time, AET would give a list of recommendations to SEECOP which should be considered by SEECOP in order to achieve a good scientific cooperation with other NWP consortia in Europe. This list was compiled by Balázs Szintai during October and sent to Dick Blaauboer, who presented it at the STAC Meeting. STAC decided that SEECOP is acknowledged as a new NWP consortium in Europe.

 

Support for the Global Lake Data Base

Under the coordination of the EUMETNET C-SRNWP Programme a lake data base is being developed. This global lake data base (GLDB) comprises valuable information regarding lake depths and lake bathymetry. These information are especially useful in lake modeling and data assimilation, which provide an important component for the development of numerical weather prediction models and consequently weather forecasts. The ALADIN consortium covered the maintenance and development costs of GLDB for 2015. As in the previous years all NWP consortia have already covered costs for GLDB, at the AET meeting it was decided that financial support will be asked from EUMETNET in future for this purpose.

 

C-SRNWP Surface Data Pool

The usage of the data pool is very low (about 3 requests in one year), thus it should be tried to increase the usage. AET agreed that a first step should be that C-SRNWP PM asks the users of the data pool why the usage is so low and what should be done with the data (perhaps more quality control, etc..) to increase the usage.

 

Collaboration with WMO on NWP model development

A first contact was made with WMO (Milan Dacic). The aim is to seek collaboration possibilities with WMO regarding NWP developments in Europe.

 

3.   Communication and cooperation

The communication with C-SRNWP member representatives, the Forecasting Programme Manager, other PMs of the Forecasting Programme, Expert Teams is mainly maintained via email. Also the following meetings were used to enhance the communication and cooperation with different partners:

It is to be mentioned as well, that there are 29 registered users the SRNWP surface data pool (maintained by the COSMO consortium).

 

4.   Benefits delivery

In general, the coordination of European limited area modeling activities is clearly beneficial for the EUMETNET partners, since it enhances the development of SRNWP models used by the modeling consortia and their members, significantly contributing to the improvement of meteorological forecasting services with special emphasis on the protection of life and property.

 

More particularly during this period, a contribution to the planning of the European observation network has been made where the needs of short range forecasting has been taken into account. This might lead to improved short range forecasts (potentially with lower costs) through an improved data network to assimilate. A significant coordination effort was made to exchange information with the newly organized NWP consortium SEECOP. A good collaboration with this new consortium will be beneficial to all members of the C-SRNWP Project on the longer run, by exchanging knowledge on different aspects of limited area modeling.

 

5.   Financial report

Please find it in a separate excel file.

 

6.   Risks and issues

None to report.

 

7.   Programme change requests

None.

 

8.   Outlook

The most important SRNWP related coordination goals for the 2016 are to