Outline - 9th Workshop on Meteorological Operational Systems

Introduction

The planned biennial Workshop on Meteorological Operational Systems, to be held at ECMWF 10-14 November 2003, will be the ninth in the series.

The workshop will review the state of the art of meteorological operational systems and address future trends in the use of medium-range forecast products, data management and meteorological visualisations on workstations.

Use and interpretation of medium-range to long-range forecast guidance

The ECMWF forecasting system now provides the users with forecast guidance from the medium-range to seasonal time scales. Bridging the gap is the monthly forecast run, which is still a test system under evaluation. In March 2003, the operational analysis and forecast production at ECMWF was implemented on the new IBM High Performance Computing Facilities. Shortly afterwards, the second run of the medium-range forecasting system was introduced. The Centre now provides 10-day forecasts from the deterministic and the ensemble forecasting system twice daily to its users based on 00 and 12 UTC analysis times. The more frequent updating of the forecast products provides the users with more recent guidance material, better continuity and the possibility of early detection of changes in the weather pattern of the occurrence of severe weather events. The use of the probabilistic forecast guidance provides the basis for risk assessments.

Operational centres will present their approaches to medium-range weather forecasting and report on their experiences with the recent enhancement to the forecasting system. The issue of forecasting extreme weather events in the medium range will be addressed and discussed in a working group. Presentations on the use and evaluation of seasonal forecast products will also be welcome in this session.

The Centre now makes comprehensive use of operational and research satellite data provided routinely by the satellite operators and processing centres. Timely delivery of the data is essential for operational use in global forecasting systems. The impact and importance of satellite data in global assimilation and forecasting systems will be reviewed in a special session.

Operational data management systems

Web technology has to an increasing extent facilitated the provision of information and data to the users of the Centre's services. Data servers with browser tools for the users have been installed for dedicated delivery of datasets from research projects, such as DEMETER and ERA. Interactive tools and user interfaces will be presented and issues of how to harness the benefits of web technology to provide user orientated access to information systems and data will be addressed in this session and discussed further in a working group.

Meteorological visualisation applications

In addition to the interactive meteorological visualization applications, increasing web usage demands batch production of plots with increased support for user interaction. Systems for interactive and batch use will be presented and demonstrated. It is also expected that vendors will participate and introduce their latest visualisation tools and hardware developments, updates to existing meteorological visualisation applications and new developments in this area will be presented and demonstrated at the exhibition during the workshop.