13th Workshop on meteorological operational systems

The Thirteenth Workshop on Meteorological Operational Systems took place at ECMWF from 31 October to 4 November 2011.

Description

The biennial Workshop on Meteorological Operational Systems was the thirteenth in the series. The workshop reviewed recent developments in the use and interpretation of medium and extended range weather forecasts and addressed the data management and visualisation requirements.

This year there was an additional focus on the use of meteorological data in multi-disciplinary applications. The workshop reviewed international initiatives aiming at making meteorological data readily accessible to wider user communities. These initiatives influence the development of meteorological operational systems, data management and archive systems, meteorological visualisation on workstations and associated web services.

Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance

The ECMWF forecasting system provides users with operational forecast guidance twice daily for the medium range, including a high-resolution deterministic forecast run at 16 km resolution (T1279) and an Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) run at 32 km (T639). A coupled atmosphere-ocean system is used from day 10 onwards, extending the EPS range to 30 days twice a week. The portion beyond 10 days is run at 60 km resolution (T319), to 15 days twice daily and to 30 days from 00 UTC each Monday and Thursday. The Monday run is due to become fully operational later in 2011. ECMWF also provides longer-range predictions, providing operational forecasts once a month out to seven months. A new version of the seasonal forecasting system (System 4) is currently being tested for implementation later this year.

In June 2010, ECMWF implemented an ensemble of data assimilation (EDA) which provides estimates of analysis accuracy used in the creation of initial-time perturbations for the EPS. This important new development and other recent changes to the forecasting systems will be presented at the workshop, together with developments in the range of products provided by the Centre. There will be a special focus on the development of tools and products suitable for exchange of meteorological data for use in other disciplines.

It is expected that users of the ECMWF forecasts will report on their approach to medium and extended range weather forecasting, including the use and application of ECMWF products. It is planned to address the issues affecting accessibility of meteorological data, whether gridded or graphical, in a working group and contributions from other operational NWP centres addressing, in particular, experience in this area will be welcome.

Operational data management and visualisation systems

To exchange meteorological data and maps between different disciplines requires adherence to common standards and conventions. The meteorological community can choose from an already large set of commonly accepted standards. There are those defined and used by the web community (W3C – HTTP, HTML, XML/JSON) and in the GIS community, such as the standards of the OGC and recommendations from the EU INSPIRE directive; these have already been accepted and are in wide use by the end users in several communities.

Environmental and geographical data are heterogeneous by nature. Different applications require very different handling of datasets as well as different data formats and organisation.

This workshop provides an opportunity to share experiences of the management and exchange of meteorological data beyond the meteorological community using the mechanisms being established within INSPIRE, OGC and SRNWP. Discussions could cover, but should not be limited to the following topics:

  • Exchange and distribution of environmental and geographical data
  • Cataloguing and discovery
  • Data models and formats
  • Quality control, metadata and annotations
  • Databases and archives, retrieval facilities
  • Processing software and data mining tools
  • Review of available techniques, such as sampling, clustering and hierarchical presentation, to reduce the size of the data while maintaining the level of visual information
  • Impact of the graphics format used for the end-user
  • Visualisation on a limited-size screen display (hand-held devices)

New meteorological data processing visualisation systems and updates to existing applications was presented and demonstrated at an exhibition.

Programme

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Presentations

Monday 31 October  
Session 1: Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance
 

Development of the ECMWF forecasting systems

Erik Andersson (ECMWF)

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Progress and the future directions of the Canadian weather and environmental prediction systems

Michel Jean (Meteorological Service of Canada)

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Introduction of medium and extended range forecast system and their applications in CMA

Xueshun Shen (China Meteorological Administration)

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Use of ECMWF products at Meteo-France

Mireille Mayoka (Meteo-France)

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Use of ECMWF products at MeteoGroup - focus on Road Engineering

Ingeborg Smeding (Meteo Consult)

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Tuesday 1 November  
Session 2: operational data management and visualisation systems
 

Mapping meteorological data beyond the meteorological domain

Sylvie Lamy-Thepaut (ECMWF)

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Metview 4: Enhanced functionalities for observation monitoring

Iain Russell (ECMWF)

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Diana - Ideas on standards and future directions

David Boddie (Norwegian Meteorological Institute)

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Visual Weather web services

Jozef Matula (IBL Software Engineering)

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Recent developments of the meteorological workstation NinJo

Gerhard Eymann (Deutscher Wetterdienst)

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Synopsis project: from Synergie to Synergie-next

Antoine Lasserre-Bigorry (Meteo-France)

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Session 1: Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance
 

The NCEP application of ensemble information across multiple scales and user groups

David Bright (NOAA/NWS/NCEP/Aviation Weather Centre)

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Emerging trends in the role of the forecaster

David Novak (National Centers for Environmental Prediction / Hydrometeorological Prediction Center)

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Application of NWP products and meteorological information processing system in Hong Kong

Yuet Sim Li (Hong Kong Observatory)

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The new ECMWF seasonal forecasting system 4

Laura Ferranti (ECMWF)

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First impressions of System 4 seasonal forecasts

Warwick Norton and Dan Rowlands (Cumulus/PCE Investors)

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Customized daily to seasonal predictions for the energy sector using ECMWF forecasts

James Belanger and Violeta Toma (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences)

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Wednesday 2 November  
Session 2: operational data management and visualisation systems
 

GRIB data handling with SKY at Deutscher Wetterdienst

Harald Lemmin (Deutscher Wetterdienst)

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Spatial data architecture operational management in Romania

Gheorghe Stancalie (National Meteorological Administration of Romania)

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The use of SMS at CPTEC's suites alongside the supercomputer's replacement

Jose Aravequia (CPTEC/INPE)

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The CEDA web processing service for rapid deployment of earth system data services

Stephen Pascoe (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

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Session 1: Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance
 

Towards operational GMES atmosphere services: MACC/MACC-II global production at ECMWF

Richard Engelen (ECMWF)

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Forecasting for Emergency Preparedness and Response

Rashid Kashif (World Food Programme)

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The WMO Severe Weather Forecast Demonstration Project

David Richardson (ECMWF)

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Using ECMWF products in support of mobile weather alert pilot project over Lake Victoria in Uganda

Khalid Muwembe (Uganda Meteorological Department)

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Thursday 3 November  
Session 1: Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance
 

JMA Coupled Ensemble Prediction System for seasonal forecast

Akira Ito (Japan Meteorological Agency)

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Extended weather forecast and seasonal climate prediction at INPE-CPTEC

Paulo Nobre (INPE/CPTEC)

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GLOSEA4 - the Met Office's new integrated monthly/seasonal forecast system

Tim Hewson (Met Office)

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Ensemble applications: TIGGE archive and the multi-disciplinary GEOWOW project

David Richardson (ECMWF)

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ecCharts

Cihan Sahin (ECMWF)

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Recent developments and plans for the COSMO-LEPS system

Andrea Montani (HydroMeteoClimate Regional Service ARPA-SIMC)

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Generating boundary values for the COSMO-DE-EPS

Helmut Frank (Deutscher Wetterdienst)

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Session 2: operational data management and visualisation systems
 

Making information accessible - WMO Information Systems

Steve Foreman (World Meteorological Organization)

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The ERA-CLIM data server

Cristian Codorean (ECMWF)

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The work of the MetOcean Domain working group of the OGC

Marie-Francoise Voidrot (Meteo-France)

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Metview 4 - bringing OGC services to the desktop

Sandor Kertesz (ECMWF)

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OGC web services showcase - how they can help forecasters

Stephan Siemen (ECMWF)

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Friday 4 November  
Session 1: Use and interpretation of medium and extended range forecast guidance
 

Ensemble applications and integration with deterministic post-processing

Ken Mylne (Met Office)

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Developments toward multi model-based forecast product generation

Ervin Zsoter (Hungarian Met Service)

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Floods, droughts and fires: Demonstrating the value of ECMWF forecasts in hydrology

Florian Pappenberger (ECMWF)

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Proceedings

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