Yearly Report for 2013 and Financial Statement

author:

Gergely Bölöni, C-SRNWP PM
Hungarian Meteorological Service
1024 Budapest, Kitaibel Pal utca 1., Hungary

date:

January 30, 2014

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 (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 2013 the following coordination efforts have been made.

Participation organization of short-range NWP related meetings

At the HIRLAM-ALADIN All Staff meeting and at the COSMO General meeting, a presentation was given by the C-SRNWP PM about the recent and future coordination activities within the project. The EPS and Physics Expert Teams have been active in organizing the scientific programme of the EPS-Physics scientific workshop held on the 18-20 June at AEMET. 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.

Coordination with OPERA for enhancing radar data assimilation

C-SRNWP PM did his best to help the OPERA PM to further clarify the needs of the SRNWP (and NWP) community regarding the radar data (OPERA products) and thus to accomplish the OPERA deliverables OD1 and OD3 on time (by the end of 2014). Members of the Opera User Group (OUG) from the SRNWP community have been active in clarifying the set of metadata needed to be sent to Odyssey for enabling data Quality Indication (QI). The redistribution and central quality flagging of radial wind data is likely to progress as expected. The redistribution and quality flagging of reflectivity data is a critical point though. One of the important requirements of the SRNWP community is the distinction between “no data” (due to cluttering or inbuilt filtering of noise) and “no rain” information. This turns out to be not trivial to manage even at the level of NMSs, but in some cases it will require to go back to the radar providers and to change / upgrade the signal processor of radars. This fact may slow down the achievement of OD1 regarding reflectivity and the estimation of the delay is very uncertain due to the heterogeneity of the European radar network. It is to be mentioned that through SMHI, OPERA volume data are accessible for the modeler community for testing and so far without any user support or service level agreement.

Observation network design (support EUCOS, Obs-SET)

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.

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

During the year the ALADIN, COSMO and HIRLAM SRNWP consortia gained experience using the “boundary condition test-bed at resolution T1279” kindly provided by ECMWF, within their very high resolution (HR) EPS systems. The impact of using high-resolution (T1279) ECMWF ENS boundary condition data for the HR EPS runs was investigated compared to the case when the current operational ECMWF boundary conditions are used. A workshop at ECMWF was held (9-10 December 2013) to overview the results of the above experiments, assessing the added value of high-resolution (T1279) ENS LBCs compared to the current operational LBCs. Based on these results and on other requirements of the SRNWP EPS community, a proposal has been prepared for the TAC subgroup for the revision of the Boundary Condition (BC) Optional project of ECMWF. The proposal contains two options, both as an extension of the current BC project:

The TAC subgroup will consider this proposal and possibly put it forward to TAC at its next meeting (9-10 October 2014).

SRNWP data pool for universities/academia

The SRNWP data pool is currently accessible for C-SRNWP project members. The data included in the pool helps the validation of soil models and soil-atmosphere interfaces in NWP models (the data are accessible with a delay of half year to prevent their use in operational analysis and forcasting). It is a general view of the SRNWP community that providing the SRNWP data pool to universities would foster the development of NWP soil or atmospheric models at universities, offering an additional manpower available at NMSs. The C-SRNWP PM prepared a proposal for the next STAC/PFAC meeting (October 2013) promoting the access to universities. The proposal has been endorsed by STAC/PFAC and has been approved by Assembly in November 2013. The two non-EUMETNET data providers (ARPA-SIMC and Roshydromet) expressed informally, that they also support the proposal to extend the access of the SRNWP data pool. Correspondence in this matter is ongoing with Roshydromet, ARPA-SIMC already sent its official answer to the C-SRNWP PM.

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 GLDB is available for the whole European and world weather and climate modeling community for research and development purposes. The funding for the technical maintenance of GLDB was provided by ECMWF during 2012 but it has not been prolonged. It has been proposed that the European Environmental Agency (EEA) includes this database to its product list and takes care about its maintenance and development in the future. This proposal was however not successful. A solution for the continuation was proposed by the COSMO consortium. The COSMO PM declared at the EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting, that the COSMO consortium will cover the maintenance and development costs of GLDB for 2014. For the continuation in 2015, the ALADIN consortium seems to be the actual candidate.

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. The questionnaire was sent out  by the C-SRNWP PM to the SRNWP consortia (ALADIN, COSMO, HIRLAM, LACE, UKMO) leaders in September but not many answers came in that time. A reminder has been circulated in December, which resulted in a couple of inputs.

Preparation of the EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting

The EWGLAM/SRNWP meeting (30 September – 3 October) took place in Antalya. 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

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, the SRNWP Advisory ET (AET) meeting took place. At the meeting the COSMO PM announced that the COSMO consortium is ready to support the maintenance and development of the Global Lake Data Base (GLDB) in 2014. It was very much welcomed by AET and also pointed out that the future maintenance and development beyond 2014 should be done with the involvement of the other consortia on a rotational basis. Noticing the permanent vacant ET chair positions, a task oriented approach has been proposed by the AET, which means that the ETs without chair will be contacted for a volunteer with respect to each specific, well defined coordination task once necessary. The AET meeting minutes are available from the C-SRNWP PM.

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 5 new users (Czech Republic, Germany, France, UK, the Netherlands) have joined to use 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 the coordination work done during 2013 implicitly contributes to the development of limited area model (LAM) data assimilation systems (through the coordination with OPERA, 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). Also, through giving access to universities to the SRNWP data pool, some contribution is expected from the academic community in the development of land-surface models. Ensuring the development of the Global Lake Data Base by the COSMO consortium for 2014, enables progress in the field of surface modeling. The joint planning with ECMWF to better serve convection permitting ensemble runs with boundary condition data is expected to have a positive impact on short range EPS forecasting on a 5-years timescale.

5. Financial report

Date: 08.01.2014
End of Year (2013) Income and Expenditure Statement
2013 End of Year Statement 2013 Approved Programme Budget Difference from Budget Approved (2014) Programme Budget
Revenue
R1 Contributions from participating members 35.000 35.000 0 35.000
R2 Surplus approved for use in year as S2 381 381 0 0
Total Revenue 35.381 35.381 0 35.000
Expenditure
E1 PM Salary(incl. Sec & ICT support) 30.000 30.000 0 30.000
E2 PM Travel 5.381 5.381 0 5.000
Total expenditure: 35.381 35.381 0 35.000
Balance in year - surplus / (deficit) 0 0 0 0
Surplus
S1 Surplus at start of year 1.018 1.018 0 637
S2 Approved allocation to revenue -381 -381 0 0
S3 In year project surplus or deficit 0 0 0 0
S4 Surplus at end of period 637 637 0 637
S5 Surplus amount held in EIG account 1.018
Explanatory notes:

R2: The 2013 overspending (381€) is covered from last year's surplus. This change has been done under the right of the 2013 financial delegation and with the approval of the FPM and ED EUMETNET.

S2/S5: 381€ are still in EIG account and included in S5. 381€ will be transferred to C-SRNWP in February 2014)

6. Risks and issues

None to report.

7. Programme change requests

None.

8. Outlook

The most important SRNWP related coordination goals for the 2014 are to