Using ECMWF's Forecasts (UEF2019)

IMPROVER is a new post-processing system under development by the Met Office to provide seamless probabilistic forecasts from 1h to 2 weeks ahead blending different NWP inputs including convective-scale UK models and ensembles and the ECMWF ENS (Roberts and Mylne, 2019 – UEF presentation). These forecasts are updated hourly to incorporate frequent model update cycles into the blend and present forecasters and users with a single blended forecast picture at all times incorporating the latest data. IMPROVER software is open source and available for other centres to use and contribute to, and data are managed on standard grid formats (Global and UK) stored in NetCDF format to facilitate model blending and to decouple end users from multiple model grids. IMPROVER forecast outputs are presented as probability distributions, as probabilities or percentiles depending on the variable, on standard grids or as site extractions. This poster will describe aspects of these standard presentations and the delivery of the data through the Met Office’s cloud-based Service Hub with a view to stimulating discussion on wider data sharing and blending approaches.