The year 2018 was rich in developments across ECMWF’s activities, including a major upgrade of the Integrated Forecasting System; the Annual Seminar on Earth system data assimilation; the launch of the Climate Data Store; and the release of an invitation to tender for ECMWF’s next high-performance computing facility.
ECMWF has appointed Louise Nuijens (TU Delft), Marc Bocquet (École des Ponts ParisTech) and Maria-Helena Ramos (Irstea) to three-year Fellowships from 1 January 2019.
ECMWF’s new atmospheric reanalysis, ERA5, will soon provide a detailed global picture of meteorological conditions back to 1979. ECMWF scientist Hans Hersbach has overseen the planning and production of this innovative dataset.
On the occasion of the 93rd Council meeting, ECMWF’s Richard Engelen and Rossana Dragani will deliver a lecture on 4 December 2018 entitled ‘Atmospheric composition in the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS)’. The lecture will be live-streamed from 17:15 GMT.
The EU’s Copernicus programme has launched an initiative to support the Paris Agreement stocktaking exercise with a new observation-based service to monitor CO2 emissions resulting from human activities. ECMWF is one of the partners in the initiative.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the EU, upgraded its seasonal forecast products on 13 November. Forecasts are now available from five models compared to three before, and one of the original models has been upgraded to a new version.
Python experts from across the world came together at ECMWF on 30 and 31 October 2018 to review progress in developing Python frameworks for Earth system sciences. Nineteen speakers gave updates on recent developments.
The Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS), for which ECMWF is the computational centre, was upgraded on 14 November to provide improved river flood forecasts across the world. The upgrade is the first after GloFAS became an operational service earlier this year.
The process of moving ECMWF’s data centre to Bologna, Italy, entered a new phase with the release of an Invitation to Tender for ECMWF’s next high-performance computing facility on 12 November 2018.
The Metop-C weather satellite was successfully launched from Europe’s space port in Kourou, French Guiana, on 7 November 2018. It will help to ensure the continuous supply of crucial data to help initialise numerical weather prediction models for years to come.
Recent work has prepared the ground for ECMWF to assimilate satellite observations providing information on the vertical structure of clouds. This will help to determine the initial conditions on which global weather forecasts are based.
After nearly four years of developing and testing ECMWF’s new Meteorological Interpolation and Regridding (MIR) software package, its main developer, Pedro Maciel, is happy to certify that it is ready for operations.
The autumn 2018 issue of the ECMWF Newsletter is now available. As well as news about ECMWF staff and events, it features articles about new developments and the use that can be made of ECMWF products.
Every 13 October, the UN-sponsored International Day for Disaster Reduction celebrates how people and communities around the world are reducing their exposure to disasters. From storms, droughts and heatwaves to floods and wildfires, many disasters are weather-related.
ECMWF is pleased to announce that the hourly data and 06/18 UTC forecast runs from its Boundary Conditions Optional Programme are now available to all users holding a real-time licence, upon request.
The ESCAPE-2 project on energy-efficient scalable algorithms for weather and climate prediction at the exascale was formally launched with a kick-off meeting at ECMWF from 2 to 4 October 2018. It will build on the success of the ESCAPE project, which has achieved remarkable gains in computing efficiency.
The launch of the Metop-C satellite, scheduled for 7 November 2018, will ensure the continuous supply of crucial data to help initialise numerical weather prediction models for years to come. Having three Metop satellites in orbit will open the door to innovative uses of the data.
ECMWF is now accepting applications for its 2019 training courses. The programme includes courses on ECMWF forecast products, software packages and applications and on numerical weather prediction (NWP).
Nineteen speakers presented progress and challenges in Earth system data assimilation at ECMWF’s Annual Seminar from 10 to 13 September 2018. More than a hundred participants attended this flagship event in ECMWF’s calendar.