News

More than 50 ocean and data assimilation experts came together at ECMWF from 22 to 25 January to discuss the way forward for the use of observations of sea-surface temperature (SST) and sea ice in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate applications.

Developing a 4D variational data assimilation system was one of ECMWF’s biggest-ever projects. A symposium to mark the 20th anniversary of the operational implementation of 4D-Var took place at the Centre on 26 January.

The winter 2017/18 issue of the ECMWF Newsletter is now available. As well as news about ECMWF staff and events, it features articles about new developments and the use that can be made of ECMWF products.

ECMWF is launching a programme open to anybody keen to develop innovative weather data technologies. Applications to work on any one of 13 challenges can be submitted until 30 March.

Tropical cyclones are one of the deadliest weather phenomena. One of the avenues being pursued at ECMWF to improve forecasts of tropical cyclones is to better take into account interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere during the forecast period.

The first complete temperature datasets for 2017 show that last year was the third in a row of exceptionally warm years, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) implemented by the European Weather Centre (ECMWF) can announce.

ECMWF will be at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, from 7 to 11 January. Find out when our staff are presenting and when they will be available at our booth.

The year started with a bang when ECMWF Copernicus reanalysis data showed that 2016 had been the warmest year on record. Other milestones included the decision to build a new data centre in Bologna, a major model upgrade and the implementation of a new seasonal forecasting system.

Speakers at a symposium held at ECMWF on 8 December outlined the remarkable contributions to numerical weather prediction (NWP) made by Adrian Simmons in the course of a career spanning five decades.

ECMWF is stepping up its efforts to provide processing and visualisation options in the Python programming language. To engage with the developer community, the Centre hosted a Python frameworks workshop on 28 and 29 November 2017.