Virtual Event: Using ECMWF's Forecasts (UEF2020)

The presentation will review forecast product development activities at ECMWF over the past year, in response to user requests and feedback.
New forecast outputs introduced over the last year include a new Extreme Forecast Index (EFI) to highlight the large-scale water vapour transport in the atmosphere, as well as products relating to large-scale weather regimes and extremes in the extended...

ECMWF provides its users around the world with predictions for days, weeks and seasons ahead at a level of accuracy and reliability second to none. The Centre owes this leading position to a combination of collaborative principles, top-level professionals, powerful HPC capacities and a strong user focus.

This talk will present ECMWF plans and provide updates on ongoing work programmes....

Near-surface forecast biases are the result of a complex interplay between processes parametrized in the atmospheric and surface columns of a model, leading to locally generated errors, and advection processes, which constitute a non-local source of errors. Understanding the leading causes of such errors is necessary to address and reduce near-surface biases in a way that improves the physics...

An update is given on the evolution of forecast skill of the IFS in the medium and extended range. It is shown that the implementation of model cycle 46r1 in June 2019 has had a significant positive impact on both upper-air and near-surface variables. Causes of persistent systematic errors in near-surface forecasts are discussed and recent steps undertaken for reducing them are outlined....

Users are key to everything that is done at ECWMF. Our goal for over 40 years has been to improve global numerical weather predictions to support our Member and Co-operating States, as well as the broader meteorological communities. “Keeping users at the heart of operations” (this year UEF theme) is one key element to providing successfully products and services to users. The talk will...

Mike Sleigh and myself would like to either co-chair a workshop or give a joint presentation on the work going on at ECMWF to improve the R2O process. We would like to discuss this more with the organiser(s) to see what would fit best into the programme. Topics to include:
- Overview of the current R2O process at ECMWF
- Identifying ways we can improve the process
- Our current focus to...

The topic and aim is how can work the improved know how transfer from research in theoretical meteorology to apply in operational practise (synoptical approach). And the opposite case - providing of case studies with meaningful results from behalf of synoptic, meso- and subgrade scale and their interpretation with different conceptional models as well as current model physics and...

The World Climate Service (please see link at bottom of this page) is a commercial web-based portal designed to enable meteorologists and weather-sensitive enterprises to improve their long-range forecasting process. It provides independent sources of long-range forecast information, including statistical and analog forecast tools, to improve scenario analysis and the communication of future...

Météo-France is working on a new severe weather warnings system that will be ready in 2021. It will be more precise, more understandable, more efficient.
The main novelties are to overcome the administrative district "Département" and to display two distinct warnings maps for today and tomorrow.

The goal is to improve the consideration of local vulnerabilities and communication with...

Over the past fifteen years, during and after the THORPEX era, several novel experimental products based on ECMWF ensemble data have been developed for use during tropical cyclone field campaigns. The products include guidance for targeted observations; track probabilities; probabilities of tropical cyclogenesis and related environmental quantities; and diagnostics related to tropical cyclone...

The User Voice Corner at UEF2020 provides an opportunity for everyone who uses ECMWF data, products and services to provide feedback on these, discuss improvements and suggest ideas for the future. Due to the virtual nature of this year’s UEF the User Voice Corner will all be held online through a combination of presentations, breakout groups and forums.

The User Voice Corner will begin...

In previous years the UEF dinner has been an opportunity to have fun and network with colleagues in an informal environment. Unfortunately this year we are unable to do the dinner however we'd like to bring a bit more fun to UEF2020 so during this year we will be holding a Virtual Soiree where we will be hosting a 'How well do you know ECMWF?' quiz.

Details on joining the quiz will be...

ECMWF provides its users around the world with predictions for days, weeks and seasons ahead at a level of accuracy and reliability second to none. The Centre owes this leading position to a combination of collaborative principles, top-level professionals, powerful HPC capacities and a strong user focus.

This talk will present ECMWF plans and provide updates on ongoing work programmes....

Daily ECMWF maximum gust forecasts from the Copernicus C3S seasonal hindcast project have been used to develop diagnostics directly relevant to the insurance industry.

Firstly, by converting wind gusts into losses through simple insurance exposure considerations and damage functions, we are able to identify the spatial characteristics of the largest industry loss events as well as looking...

Smart Climate Hydropower Tool is an innovative web-cloud-based service that implements a set of data-driven methods for river discharge. An application for two catchments in South America is discussed (test cases), where management of hydropower plants can benefit from knowledge of incoming discharge forecasts up to 6 months in advance.
SCHT has been developed inside H2020 project "CLARA -...

Insufficient precipitation and subsequent water stress for crop production are among the biggest risks in agriculture. Especially the past two years (2018, 2019) in central Europe show that dry and hot summers enhance the probability of harvest failures due to long term drought situations. Hence, a better prediction of long-term crop water stress situations could improve the resilience and...

Accelerating climate adaptation and boost climate mitigation practices is strictly linked to the provision of science-based and policy-relevant climate information. The timely production and delivery of climate services is promoting innovation with the objective of building a climate-smart society. Theorizing and understanding the mechanisms through which innovation takes place is vital to...

In recent years National Meteorological Services have expressed an increasing interest in using the descent phase of operational radiosonde soundings. After a sounding balloon burst, a radiosonde continues measurement and can provide another linked, but still independent profile data measured at a downstream location and about two hours after the launch.

In response reporting of descent...

Machine Learning refers to a set of techniques for developing software routines by reverse engineering them from data. With this approach, it is possible to develop capabilities beyond those we can build by hand. Using these techniques, we can improve all aspects of the numerical weather prediction pipeline. In this presentation, I will review some of the main ideas behind machine learning and...

This presentation will provide an overview of Copernicus Services at ECMWF.
ECMWF is indeed the entrusted entity for the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. The Copernicus Climate Change Service responds to environmental and societal challenges associated with human-induced climate change. The service will give access to...

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, one of the six thematic services of the European Programme on earth's observations Copernicus, is managed by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission. The service, which has been operational for only a couple of years, can now count on nearly 45 000 users towards whom it delivers some 50 TB of data per day. This short talk is to describe the current...

CAMS is the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. It is implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission and delivers information about atmospheric composition, emissions and surface fluxes as well as solar radiation and climate forcing based on Earth Observation. CAMS products are delivered both by ECMWF and by a wide range of contractors distributed in Europe. They are open and...

This talk will give an overview of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) activities at ECMWF. ECMWF is the computational centres of wildfire and flood for CEMS, and both systems run at European and Global scale. The forecasts for floods and fire are disseminated to a range of users, most importantly the forecast user communities, the European Emergency Response Coordination Centre...

In her presentation, Freja will focus on C3S activities that relate to data-driven climate communication, demonstrating how in an operational chain data is transformed into information products of various types and with different target audiences. The main use case will be the European State of the Climate report for 2019, which was published in April 2020. The presentation will showcase how...

The Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS) aims to bring climate data to a wide audience of users. From users with a skilled technical background who would like access raw model and observation data for research purposes, to higher level users that would like to access the final product to help inform decisions.

The CDS achieves this by acting as the gateway to the data which is hosted on...

Climate-sensitive sectors need to have access to reliable data and information products in order to understand and manage risks associated to climate variations and changes. The C3S Sectoral Information System is a credible source of tools, applications and indicators built on high value climate data, providing relevant and accessible information to users together with correct examples on how...

AsSISt is the solution led by Capgemini in collaboration with INERIS and Barcelona Supercomputing Center to offer aircraft maintenance improvement via the related impact of particles during flights and on ground.
The service provides indicators to help airlines companies, aircraft manufacturers with a precise monitoring of the plane exposure to harmful particles and then allowing them to...

ECMWF is currently producing the next generation of European Reanalysis ERA5. Among others, it will make it possible to better understand the processes and interactions between different components of the Earth System which has derived into the climate from 1950 until present. The core of ERA5 is the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System in combination with a powerful 4D-VAR data assimilation...

The operation planning of run-of-river (RoR) plants is subject to the water availability, which presents a very high interannual variability, being even more significant in mountainous Mediterranean areas with snow cover. In this context, seasonal forecast constitutes an added source of information that may help to narrow down the operational options inferred from historical data sources.
In...

The AQCLI service provides an assessment of how climate change will affect air quality, especially for Particulate Matter (PM10), one of the main pollutant during winter, and Ozone (O3) , the main pollutant during summer. The service covers a 150 km x 150 km area centered around the city of Bologna in northern Italy. The assessment will be representative of urban background concentration. The...

Weather forecasts, climate reanalyses and air quality information produced by ECMWF act as a vital input for many downstream simulations and applications. Transferring, storing and locally modifying large volumes of such data before integration currently presents a significant challenge to users. The key aim for ECMWF within the H2020 HiDALGO project (https://hidalgo-project.eu/) is to migrate...

PWA (Parma River Basin Water Assessment) service has been developed within H2020 Clara Project related to application of Climate Services; this service aims to integrate climate, hydrological, water quality and habitat observations and simulations, including climate projections. PWA has been implemented in the Parma river basin, and has a special focus on water quality, habitat evaluation,...

CLIME is a climate service developed by Regional Models and geo-Hydrological Impacts (REMHI) division of CMCC Foundation (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change). CLIME service can be used to evaluate several high-resolution climate data for different goals that can be supporting users with different expertise and requirement in their climate analysis and improving understanding of...

Effective global risk early alert products for high-impact weather are useful for decision-making and timely deployment of resources in humanitarian aid missions among other international operations. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of producing objective risk alert maps up to 10 days ahead based on model reanalysis data and ensemble prediction system (EPS) outputs, using...

ECMWF’s goal by 2025 is to provide forecast information needed to help save lives, protect infrastructure and promote economic development in Member and Co-operating States through research and operational ensemble-based analyses and predictions.

This session will present ECMWF plans and provide updates on ongoing work programs which will to help achieve this goal. Current progress and...

The eGAFOR project arose from the general aviation user’s need to have harmonised weather information available for flights planned over several countries. In order to meet their requirements, users were included in all phases of the project.
Therefore, eGAFOR will be a uniform graphical route forecast of meteorological phenomena hazardous for general aviation such as cloudiness, visibility,...

The Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS; http://www.globalfloods.eu/) is a 24/7 supported operational service monitoring and forecasting floods across the world. GloFAS is part of the European Commission’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) with ECMWF as the computational centre. Its aim is to complement relevant national and regional authorities and services, and to support...

Floods cause injury and loss of life, substantial economic costs, and damage to the environment and cultural heritage. THey have become more frequent in Europe: in recent years, more than twice as many flash floods of medium to large magnitude have been registered as in the late eighties. The primary driver of such increase is the relentless sprawl of urbanisation on floodplains. Climate...

The threats posed by Climate Change, the continuously increasing pressure on agri-soils in order to fulfil food demand and the request in terms of environmental sustainability and products quality, requires advanced tools and methodologies for efficiently manage water resources and optimize agricultural and irrigations practices.
Under this view, the increasing availability in terms of...

The electric system is rapidly evolving toward the diversification of distributed energy resources (DERs), leading to an increase in the use of renewable energy sources (RES). This change in the energy sector will involve new opportunities for the integration of these into the whole power system.
The main challenge for RES to participate in the energy market is their strong dependence on the...

The operational feasibility of water infrastructures is subject to the river inputs, which also depend on rainfall variability. This fact is particularly relevant in a Mediterranean environment, where snow cover and snow processes have a great influence on the quantity and timing of water availability. This is the case of multipurpose reservoirs, where management has to meet the competitive...

Ideally, weather forecasts should be provided for points and not for the large regions represented by global model grid boxes. This mismatch problem, which can be particularly acute for rainfall that can exhibit large local variability, can be addressed using either high resolution limited-area models, or by post-processing global model output, as in “ecPoint-rainfall”, a new ECMWF...

Impact-based warnings have been gaining the attention of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to assess their potential to provide a more effective collaboration with disaster reduction and civil protection agencies, as well as to better inform the public and stakeholders. It is currently a common practice to analyze the hazardous meteorological and hydrological components...

Water management is a crucial issue in Mediterranean countries, especially in summer, when precipitation is at its climatological minimum and water resources are needed by economic activities and civil use. This conflict is expected to increase, according to future climate change impact studies, as more frequent and intense drought periods will likely occur. This will bring remarkable effects...