Second Quarterly Report for 2013 (April- June 2013)

1. Headlines

• The C-SRNWP PM supported the organization of the Obs-SET meeting by gathering inputs (observation impact diagnostics and recommendations on monitoring standards) on behalf of the SRNWP community.
• A webex meeting was held for planning actions for the promotion of European NWP models for education.
• A contribution to the planning of the SRNWP-EPS Activity was made during the SRNWP-EPS meeting at AEMET.
• Communication continued with ECMWF on the possible extension of EPS boundary conditions from the IFS model. LAM EPS experiments are ongoing to assess the added value of high-resolution test LBCs prepared by ECMWF. A workshop is foreseen for early December 2013 in order to present the results to ECMWF and to prepare a proposal for the 2014 ECMWF TAC for the extension of IFS EPS LBCs (in terms of resolution and forecast base times)
• A summary of current SRNWP coordination activities has been presented to the Forecasting Programme Manager, other PMs in the Programme and to the Secreteriat.
• The status of the C-SRNWP project was presented at the HIRLAM-ALADIN All Staff meeting where also the most important current research activities of the ALADIN, HIRLAM and LACE consortia have been learnt by the C-SRNWP PM.
• There are vacant positions for chairing 4 Expert Teams: Surface aspects, System aspects, Dynamics, Physics

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 (previously called Advisory 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, Nowcasting) and Observation (EUCOS, OPERA) Projects/Activities is done. During the second quarter of 2013 the following coordination efforts have been made.

Participation at the ALADIN-HIRLAM All Staff meeting

A presentation was given by the C-SRNWP PM about the recent and future coordination activities within the project.

Latest NWP research and operational achievements of the ALADIN, LACE and HIRLAM consortia have been presented at the workshop.

Webex meeting on promoting European NWP models for education

A webex meeting has been organized by the C-SRNWP PM in order to set up concrete goals for the general aim of promoting European NWP models in education and research. The main motivation of this anticipated promotion activity is to compete with the freely available open source limited are models developed mainly at the US, which are popular education tools at European Universities. The use of European NWP models in education at universities might be one of the key issues in successfully supplying expertise in NWP at NMSs. The Forecasting PM, the EUMETCAL PM and the OpenIFS team from ECMWF were the participants of the webex meeting beside the C-SRNWP PM. Possible promotion efforts with three levels of complexity have been identified:

1. promotion by connecting interested NMSs and universities showing successful examples;
2. Promoting the OpenIFS as an education tool for NMSs and universities;
3. Developing “education versions” of operational NWP models in the consortia and promoting these at NMSs and universities as common tools.

It has been decided that the heads of consortia and Expert Team chairs (SRNWP Advisory Expert Team) will be contacted with a questionnaire in order to measure, which of the above 3 options is realistic within the current Programme Phase. Also the UK MetOffice and ECMWF will be contacted to get an estimation of the necessary system development efforts for creating “education versions” of NWP models.

Participation at the SRNWP-EPS meeting and EPS-Physics scientific workshop

The EPS and Physics Expert Teams have been active in identifying the most interesting scientific subjects for the forthcoming EPS-Physics scientific workshop (18-20 June, Madrid). Also the C-SRNWP PM was chairing the final discussion of the workshop aiming to set up a more enhanced cooperation between EPS and Physics experts in the future. The main subject of the SRNWP-EPS meeting was to agree on how to proceed with the EPS project proposal for the second phase (June 2014 – December 2017). It has been decided that 4 Working Groups ( 1:EPS - data assimilation;2:EPS – surface aspects; 3:EPS – Physics; 4:Use and interpretation of probabilistic products) will be established, which will prepare a short document (2-3 pages each) on the envisaged plans within their fields. The documents will be summarized by the SRNWP-EPS PM, the Forecasting PM and will be presented to the autumn STAC in 2013.

Forecasting Programme meeting

The Forecasting Programme Manager organized a face to face meeting of the PMs within the Forecasting Programme. A good opportunity to meet was given by the SRNWP-EPS meeting at AEMET, where the FPM, the SRNWP-EPS, Nowcasting and the C-SRNWP PMs were anyway present. The EUMETCAL PM joined us via webex, the EMMA Project was not represented. Each PM gave an oral overview of the current activities within their projects.

Preparations for the Obs-SET meeting

Input was prepared for the annual Obs-SET meeting (previous E-SAT) on behalf of the SRNWP community. This included a survey on the SRNWP activities regarding the assimilation of BUFR radisonds including the use of the position and exact time of the measurements during the ascents. Also the EUCOS monitoring standards were commented by the SRNWP community, which was presented at the Obs-SET meeting. Degrees of Freedom for Signal (DFS) and Forecast Sensitivity to Observations (FSO) are widely used tools in global models to measure the importance of the elements of the observing network and thus for suggesting their redesign. For the Obs-SET meeting DFS and FSO results from short-range NWP models have been collected to complement the picture shown by the global experiments. Information was also collected from the OPERA PM about the status of OPERA radar volume data handling for NWP purposes foreseen for Odyssey.

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

A half year after that ECMWF kindly provided an EPS lateral boundary condition test-bed, the COSMO and HIRLAM SRNWP consortia gained experience using these boundary conditions within their very high resolution EPS systems. The ALADIN and LACE consortia will do so until the end of September presumably. In order to give a feedback to ECMWF a scientific workshop is proposed for late Autumn, where SRNWP and ECMWF EPS experts will make a common overview of the results. The purpose of the meeting would also be to help the preparation for next year’s ECMWF TAC meeting where a proposal for the extension of the EPS LBC provision by ECMWF will be requested (regarding the 06 and 18 UTC base times and the horizontal resolution T1279). Besides the above preparations, the SRNWP EPS Expert Team proposes an early request on the extension of the current operational EPS LBCs (with base time 00 and 12) in terms of update frequency (1 hourly files instead of 3 hourly, up to 48 hours).

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:

• HIRLAM-ALADIN All Staff Meeting, 14-21 April, Reykjavik
• SRNWP-EPS workshop and SRNWP-EPS Activity meeting, 17-21 April, Madrid
• Forecasting Programme Management meeting, 21 April, Madrid

It is to be mentioned as well, that 2 new users (Czech Republic, Germany) have joined to use the surface data base initiated by the C-SRNWP Expert Team on Surface processes (and 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 forecasting activities of the meteorological services with special emphasis on the protection of life and property.

More particularly the coordination work done within the 2^nd quarter of the year implicitly contributes to the development of limited area model (LAM) data assimilation systems (through the improvement of observation monitoring standards and through the collection of LAM DFS and FSO results) and to the development of physical parametrizations and short range probabilistic forecasts (through the enhancement of cooperation between EPS and physical parametrization scientists).

3. Financial report

6. Risks and issues

None to report.

7. Programme change requests

None.

8. Outlook

The most important SRNWP related coordination goals for the second half of 2013 are to

• follow the conversation between the OPERA and SRNWP communities (relevant members of the OPERA User Group) regarding the NWP use of radar data (supply of Odyssey by radial wind data by NMSs, quality indication of radial wind and reflectivity data)
• continue the communication between the SRNWP EPS experts and ECMWF about the possible extension of lateral boundary conditions from the IFS EPS system for very high resolution EPS experiments and operations
• discuss the priorities of SRNWP consortia (and possibly universities) regarding the promotion of European SRNWP models for education
• organize the scientific programme of the EWGLAM/SRNWP workshop (30 September – 3 October, Antalya), which is the most appropriate meeting for the C-SRNWP member representatives to meet
• also several meetings are foreseen for autumn with the participation of the C-SRNWP PM: Cosmo General Meeting (3-5 September, Sibiu), ECMWF SAC meeting (14-16 October, Reading)