27th EWGLAM and 12th SRNWP Meetings

3-5 October 2005, Ljubljana (Slovenia), organized by The Environmental Agency of Slovenia

Participants:

Alica Bajic, Gergely Bölöni, Massimo Bonavita, Mike Bush, Gerard Cats, Jure Cedilnik, Maria Jose Correia Monteiro, Maria Derkova, Richard Forbes, Jose A. Garcia-Moya, Dominique Giard, James Hamilton, Andras Horanyi, Mariano Hortal, Stjepan Ivatek-Sahdan, Jure Jerman, Markku Kangas, Dijana Klaric, Lars Meuller, Tiziana Paccagnella, Neva Pristov, Jean Quiby, Raluca Radu, Rein Rööm, Jozef Roskar, Kai Sattler, Francis Schubiger, Jan-Peter Schulz, Gregor Skok, Niko Sokka, Philippe Steiner, Switzerland, Jürgen Steppeler, Martina Tudor, Per Unden, Filip Vana, Josette Vanderborght, Christoph Wittmann, Mark and Nedjeljka Zagar.

1. Contents of the Newsletter/Proceedings
2. Agenda, Presentations and Posters
3. SRNWP Business Meeting
4. Report of the EWGLAM Final Discussion
5. List of the operational models in Europe in 2005

1. Contents of the Newsletter & Proceedings

2. Agenda Presentations and Posters

3. SRNWP Business Meeting of the 5th of October 2005

For the minutes: Jean Quiby

20 NWS were represented: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. As every year, the ECMWF has been invited and was represented.

The Co-ordinator has presented his report under the form of an electronic presentation which displayed all the works in progress at the time of the meeting.

Agenda of the report:

• The Network of Consortia
• Programme OPERA: Compositing necessary
• EUCOS II (2007 – 2011)
• Upper Air Soundings: Use of the BUFR code besides the TEMP code
• STORMNET
• Model comparison
• Hub for high resolution precipitation observations
• Dissemination of hourly SYNOPs
• GPS Zenital Total Delays
• SRNWP PEPS

Due to lack of time, it has not been possible to present and to discuss all these items. But the most important ones - placed at the top of the list - have been treated.

The Network of Consortia

The National Meteorological Administration of Romania is next to its full membership by ALADIN also an 'Associate Member' of the COSMO Consortium.

Programme OPERA:Compositing necessary

The Assembly acknowledged the creation of a Radar data hub at the Meteorological Office. But the Assembly could not understand that the daily production of a European radar composit has been forbidden by the EUMETNET Council (23rd Council, 14 Dec. 2004).

Radar compositing is needed by the Short-range NWP community for the validation and verification of the precipitations of the meso-scale LAMs. It would be a waste of time and resources if the same work (downloading of the radar data from the hub and making a composite) should be done in several NWS.

At unanimity minus one abstention, the Assembly passed the following Recommendation:

The European Short-Range NWP community asks the EUMETNET Council to recall its decision taken at its 23rd Meeting (14th of December 2004 in Reading) to exclude from the OPERA Programme “any work on compositing” (Point 1 of the List of Decisions).

EUCOS II (2007–2011)

The EUMETNET Council agreed at its 11th Meeting (21st November 2000 in Darmstadt) that “EUCOS is the ground-based observing system designed to serve the needs of General Numerical Weather Prediction (GNWP) over Europe”

The aim of the present phase of EUCOS (2002-2006) is to define and deploy a composit observing system for the GNWP.

Considering:

1. that today in Europe the total amount of money given by the NWS for the short-range, high-resolution NWP (manpower and computer costs for the scientific developments and the operational aspects) is higher than for. the GNWP
2. that the increase of the spatial resolution of the meso-scale NWP models we observe today will continue and that it is a priority for almost all the NWS to encourage and support NWP developments towards the km-scale resolution,

the Assembly voted at unanimity the following Recommendation:

Considering that the Proposed Revised Design presented in the “Review of the EUCOS Upper-Air Network Design” of 18 May 2005 does not consider the observational requirements needed for the high-resolution short-range NWP models, the European Short-Range NWP community asks the EUCOS Programme Board and the EUCOS Advisory Group to significantly increase the density of observations and to make sure that this density remain sufficient at night.

More generally, the delegates of the 12th Meeting of the SRNWP Programme held the 5th of October 2005 in Ljubljana ask that in the second phase of the EUCOS Programme (2007-2011) the same attention, priority and resources be given for the observation of the meso-scale as it will be done for the observation of the synoptic scale.

Upper Air Soundings: Use of the BUFR code besides the TEMP code

The TEMP code does not fulfil any longer the requirements of the data assimilation for high resolution NWP models: the geographical position of the sonde is unknown and the time of a measurement known only very approximately. Moreover, the format of the TEMP code with its 4 groups (A, B, C and D) is very unpractical for programming.

Thus the WWW Department of the WMO is making efforts to encourage migration to binary based code, i.e. to code the upper air soundings in BUFR format.

The 14th Session of the WMO Regional Association VI (7-15 September 2005 at Heidelberg, Germany) 'noted with concern that the preparation and planning for the transition to the TDCF (Table-Driven Code Forms) was not adequate.  Less than 50 per cent of NMCs in Region VI have started to develop migration plans.  Many Members still underestimate the challenge involved in a migration and also the benefits to be gained from TDCF' (Document APP_WP 4).

The necessary software for encoding sounding in BUFR exists. The RA-VI noted in the same Document: 'With a view to assisting NMCs in the migration, WMO encouraged the development and distribution of universal BUFR, CREX and GRIB decoding/encoding software on various platforms to the whole meteorological community.  ECMWF was providing BUFR software via free download.  The German Meteorological Service (DWD) developed a BUFR edition 3 library.  BUFR encoding/decoding software was also offered by NWS/NCEP (USA) and the UK MetOffice as listed in the CBS Software Registry.  BUFR/CREX tables and templates for category 1 of TAC data types (SYNOP, TEMP, PILOT, CLIMAT and CLIMAT TEMP) were available in the WMO server'.

At the time of the SRNWP Business Meeting, the documents of the 14th Session of the RA-VI were not yet available. The Co-ordinator had prepared for the SRNWP Meeting a Recommendation (see the electronic presentation) whose wording - now that the policy of the RA VI is known - must be slightly revised. Needless to say that the Assembly was convinced of the superiority of the BUFR code for the dissemination of the upper air soundings.

Recommendation:

At the 12th Meeting of the EUMETNET SRNWP Programme held the 5th of October 2005 in Ljubljana, the NWS delegates asked the EUCOS Manager to take the necessary measures in order to make sure that the dissemination on the GTS of the radiosonde data between the European NWS will take place in BUFR code as encouraged by the WWW Department of the WMO and as strongly recommended by the 14th Session of the WMO-RA VI (5 -15 September 2005 in Heidelberg).

STORMNET

This information has been given by Dominique Giard (Meteo-France).

As the Proposal for an EU Project submitted the 2nd of December 2004 for the financing of a 'Research and Training Network on high resolution NWP' has not been accepted, our proposal has been re-submitting the 28th of September 2005, again in the instrument 'Human Resources and Mobility'.

As for the first submission, Meteo-France has been the proposer for this second submission.

The following 13 NWS, all Members of the SRNWP Programme, are participating in the proposal: ZAMG (Austria), IRM (Belgium), DHMZ (Croatia), CHMU(Czech Republik), FMI (Finland), MF (France), DWD (Germany), OMSZ (Hungary), KNMI (The Netherlands), SHMU (Slovakia), INM (Spain), SMHI (Sweden) and MeteoSwiss (Switzerland).

Together they are ready to host and educate in Numerical Weather Prediction 29 ERS (Early Stage Researchers) in almost all the aspects of the NWP technique: surface, dynamics, numerics, predictability, system, data assimilation and verification. Most of the participating NWS are accompanied by an 'Associated partner' which is in the majority of the cases an Institute or a Department of a University.

After the presentation of Dominique, we had according to our schedule to close the meeting. The other points (Model comparison, Hub for high resolution precipitation, observations, Dissemination of hourly SYNOPs, GPS Zenital Total Delays and RNWP PEPS) could not be discussed, but their description in the electronic presentation (see URL at the beginning of this report) tells the interested reader what they are about.

It will now be the duty of the Co-ordinator to send with the necessary justifications the Recommendations to the different authorities and to push for their realisation where and when appropriate. It will also be part of his work to continue his effort for the realisation of the actions listed just above.

4. Report of the Final EWGLAM Discussion

Future role and format of the 'EWGLAM/SRNWP Annual Meetings'

A detailled discussion took place under the chairmanship of Per Unden. The format of our Annual EWGLAM/SRNWP Meetings has been deeply modified as can be seen from the summary made by Dominique Giard and reviewed by the chairman of discussion (Per Unden) and the SRNWP Co-ordinator (Jean Quiby):

New format of EWGLAM/SRNWP meetings:

Initiated by a proposal for in-depth changes from Per Unden in March 2005, a lively debate took place along the last EWGLAM meeting (Ljubljana, October 4th). It was discussed how to make the next annual EWGLAM/SRNWP meetings more attractive and more efficient. The objective is both to provide an overview of the main progress in NWP along the past year over whole Europe and to representatives from all European NMSs, and to allow decision making for enhanced collaboration between consortia. The new joint meeting will include the following:

Official presentations

National presentations will keep the form of posters introduced by a 5mn talk presenting the most important issues, in operations or research. Besides a table of the operational applications will be updated, each partner filling a predefined standard form (instead of the present maintenance of a list by DWD).

Group reports will be shorter, reduced to 15 mn, and present the main strategic points for each of the five consortia (ALADIN, COSMO, HIRLAM and LACE, UK).

The ECMWF presentation will not change, neither in length (30 mn) nor in content. A similar EUMETSAT presentation could be added in the future.

Thematic presentations

They will be divided in scientific domains (data assimilation, dynamics, predictability, physics, ...), shared between consortia (with 2h-2h½ per consortium for all topics), and include general overviews as well as scientific presentations on innovative issues, and discussions (at least 15 mn per topic). Each consortium will define which partition best reflects its achievements along the last year. The consortia leaders, the SRNWP coordinator, and the local organiser will between them agree on the detailed programme and check that relevant area leaders or scientists are invited (a sort of Programme committee).

Business meetings

That's where will be decided how to work together. It should take half a day.

The SRNWP meeting, prepared by the SRNWP coordinator, will be kept in more or less the same format.

It will be followed by discussions in small groups, involving mainly part of the management groups of consortia.

Participation

The length of the meeting will be increased, by half a day as a beginning (hence 3.5 days in 2006), more if new meetings are a real success, drawing more and more scientists.

Consortia should try to send more persons from the management groups or thematic coordinators. The 2005 SRNWP presentations for Lead Centres were a typical example of what should be avoided. And young scientists are welcome to EWGLAM/SRNWP meetings: this is a friendly and useful introduction to NWP life for them, and this brings some fresh ideas to the workshops.

See also the notes taken during the 2005 EWGLAM discussion

Date and place of the EWGLAM/SRNWP Meetings

The 2006 Meeting will be organised by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss in short) and will take place in Zürich von the 9th to the 12th of October. This Meeting will be organised according to the new format described above.

The 2007 Meeting will be organised by the National Meteorological Service of Croatia.

SRNWP Workshops in 2006 and 2007

• Surface Processes: next workshop due in 2006.
  No date planned because a new HIRLAM Programme (HIRLAM-A) will start 1st January 2006 with possibly a new Programme Manager (new name for Project Leader).
  The Coordinator will contact the HIRLAM Programme Manager in 2006.
• Short-range EPS: Next workshop due in 2007. Will take place in spring 2007 in Italy.
• Statistical and Dynamical Adaptation: Next workshop due in 2007. Will take place in 2007 in spring in Vienna.
• Numerical Techniques: Next mini-workshop due in 2006.
  Probably at the end of 2006. Location still unknown. The Co-coordinator will ask Pierre Bénard.

• Nonhydrostatic Modelling: Next workshop: 31st of October 2005 in Bad Orb (Germany).
  Following workshop in 2007 with a new responsible person: Michael Baldauf (no longer necessarily in Bad Orb; probably in Langen).
• Verification: Next workshop due in 2006. Will take place the 15-17 May 2006 at KNMI.
• Variational Data Assimilation: Next workshop due in 2006. A Joint SRNWP/HIRLAM/Met Office Workshop.
  Next meeting in 2006, organized by HIRLAM. The Coordinator will contact the HIRLAM Programme Manager in 2006.

5. Operational NWP models, Nov 2005