News

A satellite which is expected to improve weather forecasts by providing new wind information is ready to leave its UK production site for tests ahead of its launch at the end of 2017.

Accurate and timely observations of the land surface are vital for good weather predictions but they can be tricky to come by, ECMWF scientist Patricia de Rosnay says.

December 2016 saw Jorge Miguel Alberto de Miranda and Juhani Damski start their terms as President and Vice-President of ECMWF’s Council. At the same time, five new members were appointed to ECMWF’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

2016 was the warmest year on record with global surface air temperatures about 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) run by ECMWF on behalf of the EU.

A new Member State, two major model upgrades, a new ten-year Strategy, two director appointments – 2016 has been rich in developments from which the Centre will benefit for many years to come.

Open data will be in the spotlight during a week of events at ECMWF exploring the potential of freely available weather-related data.

Climate reanalysis has huge benefits for numerical weather prediction (NWP) as well as climate studies, and it can help to shed new light on the pace of global warming, two of ECMWF’s top reanalysis experts have said in separate high-profile interventions.

Dr Andrew Brown has been appointed as ECMWF’s next Director of Research after Professor Erland Källén steps down on 31 July 2017.

ECMWF is making big strides in preparing weather forecasting for the exascale era of supercomputing by improving efficiency and scalability in all parts of the production and dissemination workflow.

ECMWF implemented a new version of its forecasting system on 22 November, which introduces a dynamic sea-ice model and increases the resolution of the ocean model. These and other changes significantly improve the Centre’s weather predictions.