First Quarterly Report for 2014 (January – March 2014)

1. Headlines

• Difficulties with respect to the assimilation of OPERA volume data have been further elaborated by the OUG (OPERA User Group), OPERA PM and the C-SRNWP PM.
• New numerical tests are under planning to validate the quality of the foreseen additional (06 and 18 UTC runs) ECMWF ENS BCs.
• The new data policy for the SRNWP data pool (opening the access to universities / academia) has been approved by the non-EUMETNET members, the terms of use have been updated on the portal to access the data.
• The ALADIN Assembly approved the funding for the maintenance / development of the GLDB (Global Lake Data Base) for 2015.

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 first quarter of 2014 the following coordination efforts have been made.

Coordination with OPERA for enhancing radar data assimilation

C-SRNWP PM triggered an e-mail exchange between OUG (OPERA User Group) members and the OPERA PM, to understand the foreseen difficulties with respect to the deliverables OD1 and OD3 (quality flagging and redistribution of volume data). Radial wind data will be sent to ODC by almost all NMSs till the end of 2014, which is a basic condition for OD1 and OD3. For the radial wind the heterogeneity of the radar instruments (different Nyquist intervals) will require the use of de-aliasing tools. For the reflectivity data the main difficulty is to relax the current filtering to allow a distinction between cluttered data and dry pixels (which are currently treated both as “nodata”).

This prevents the use of valuable dry information from radars in order to correct spurious humidity and precipitation present in the model. A proper treatment of the problem requires 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 (by the end of 2014 only 15 % of the radars will have these upgardes) due to the heterogeneity of the European radar network.

An alternative fast solution is to send both filtered and unfiltered reflectivity data to ODC and do a filtering there. This latter solution would be possible for the 80% of the OPERA members by the end of 2014 from a technical point of view, however the bandwidth requirements for this solution have to be still analyzed. Several NMSs started to perform data assimilation experiments with the currently available volume data. The experiences and feedbacks are being collected.

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

During 2013 based on the requirements of the SRNWP EPS community and numerical experimentations, 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:

• 2 extra runs of IFS ENS (at 06 and 18 UTC) with present resolution (including the planned upgrade in 2015), 6 days forecast range, 50+1 members, hourly output (this last also for the operational 00 and 12 UTC runs)
• 2 extra runs of IFS ENS (at 06 and 18 UTC) with present resolution (included the planned upgrade in 2015), 50+1 members up to a 3 day forecast range, then 20 + 1 members up to 6 day forecast range, hourly output (this last also for the operational 00 and 12 UTC runs)

The TAC subgroup and ECMWF proposed further numerical experimentations to validate that the quality of the LAM EPS forecasts coupled to the additional 06 and 18 UTC ECMWF ENS BCs. In the first quarter of 2014 the agreement on the LAM experimental framework has been ongoing with the help of the EPS Expert Team. ECMWF started to set up the additional 06 and 18 UTC global test runs.

SRNWP data pool for universities/academia

The new data policy for the SRNWP data pool (open up the access to universities) has been approved by Assembly in November 2013 and by the two non-EUMETNET data providers (ARPA-SIMC and Roshydromet) in January 2014. The new data policy and terms of use has been uploaded to the website for accessing the SRNWP data pool.

Support for the Global Lake Data Base

The COSMO consortium covers the maintenance and development costs of GLDB for 2014 (see Q4 report 2013). Recently the ALADIN Assembly approved that the GLDB maintenance / development will be funded from the ALADIN consortium budget in 2015.

3. Financial report

4. Risks and issues

None to report.