Quarterly report: second quarter of 2008 (April-June, 2008)

The main highlight of the second quarter of the year was the organisation of the first SRNWP Advisory Committee (AC) meeting (Budapest, 15-16 May, 2008). The SRNWP Advisory Committee (its members are the leaders of the five European LAM Consortia: ALADIN, COSMO, HIRLAM, LACE and MetOffice) is a new feature of the programme, which aims towards a more efficient support to the Programme Manager from the LAM Consortia. The following main issues were considered during the AC meeting:

• The respective workplans of the Expert Teams were carefully evaluated and discussed in details. Recommendations were formulated to the Expert Teams for the continuation of their activities.
• The planning of SRNWP workshops was advised based on the experiences of previous meetings (the next few years were considered).
• The possible links between SRNWP and ECMWF were discussed: means were proposed to improve the cooperation between ECMWF and SRNWP.
• The proposed programme of the annual EWGLAM/SRNW meeting (Spain, 6-9 October, 2008) was carefully considered: a concrete proposal was formulated and communicated to the local organisers and to the Expert Teams.
• Possible links to be established with university and/or academia experts were thought of: a step-by-step approach was adapted.
• Links with other EUMETNET programmes with special emphasis on EUCOS was considered and discussed.
• The SRNWP webpage’s status and plans were revised.
• The recommendations of the last NWP vision workshop (Reading, March, 2006) were reviewed.

After the Advisory Committee meeting intensive email exchange started in order to precisely clarify the role of the Expert Teams in the future scientific networking of SRNWP in general and in the organisation of the next EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting in particular.

The last EUMETNET Council meeting was also dealing with SRNWP-related issues: it accepted the Interoperability programme with the leadership of MetOffice (Programme Manager: Rachel North) and it confirmed the content of the Verification Programme. In the latter case a “Call for Responsible Member” was issued after the Council meeting. The EUMETNET Council also formally confirmed the programme decision of the recent C-SRNWP Programme, therefore the related contracts and invoices were prepared and sent to the members of the Programme.