For the Management Group the start of the HIRLAM-5 Project has been busy with the Plan and with the meetings that have been held. 31 January1-1 February the Management Group held its first meeting (MGM1) at INM, Madrid, coupled with a member state visit where several of the INM scientists presented their work. Both events are reported in the NL following this Introduction (as well as on HEXNET, where they appeared as soon as they were ready).
At the end of March (27-29) was the big All-Staff Meeting at SMHI in Norrköping. It was very well attended and included a large number of interesting contributions, many of which are written up in this NL. A very important item was the Scientific Plan, on which we dedicated working group sessions with subsequent discussion. A lot of useful proposals and coordination details came out of this and have been incorporated in the Plan. I have written a summary of the All-Staff Meeting, as far as I have digested the meeting and from my notes. The time and status of this report has not enabled a cross-check with the participants, but I hope I have not been misrepresenting anyone too much. In any case, the operational implementations and most of the presentations are in the NL in their complete form.
In connection with the ASM, the Management Group held its 2nd Meeting, and a report from Management Group Meeting 2 is enclosed. Then the Hirlam Advisory Committee convened 10-11 April and, by coincidence, again at SMHI, Norrköping. It is now chaired by Thor Erik Nordeng, DNMI and it was a very constructive and useful meeting for the Project. A number of details in the Scientific Plan had to be clarified with a little bit of reorganisation in one part plus a summary of the main points. In general it was felt that the Plan was in good shape and that the Project had started well. The Scientific Plan is now finalised and will be available on HEXNET.
The NL articles are many and often quite large this time, hence the thickness and weight of the copy you have in front of you. It is rather more than a letter this time, a "book" might be more appropriate. The ASM reporting starts with the usual operational implementations with a lot of useful and interesting details. It serves as an easily available reference and for comparing installations.
Two scientific papers describe recent work on the background error statistics and constraint in 3D-VAR. Then, for the dynamics, there is a paper about the Tartu non-hydrostatic HIRLAM (two Technical Reports with detailed formulation and experimentation results are planned to be issued soon). Boundary conditions are reviewed and a new paper explaining about the background for the DFI boundary filter follows (there is a sub-section in the Plan on this subject). Finally, for the dynamics, there is a note about the last problems with the semi-Lagrangian scheme on Fujitsu and the solution. Then there are three turbulence papers. The first one contains verification results and this prompted further work at DMI, which is described in a new paper which follows after that. The last one shows improvements for the stable BL. Then there are papers about surface parameterization, including the effects of the unfortunate missing snow cover during February and a new Estonian contribution about a regional land use data base. Other parameterization results are for tropical cyclone experiments and the radiation updates. The last (half) day of the ASM was dedicated to synoptics, verification and System. The performance of the Spanish HIRLAM model for the X-mas storm 27 December is shown as is the French performance for the flashfloods of 11-13 of November. The delayed mode BALTEX data assimilation is described and then follow notes on FORTRAN 90 and use of HIRLAM for a course and on a LINUX cluster.
Finally, I have compiled the verification results for the 1st quarter of 2000, that you have gratefully provided me. It shows some interesting common properties of the characteristics of the, basically three, different versions of the Reference system that are employed operationally in the member institutes. A summary of the Reference system updates follows at the end.
Once again, I would like to thank all the staff for their dedication and all of you who have supplied me with the excellent material for this NL.
Per Undén, 20 April, 2000, final revision 2 May, 2000.
MGM1, INM, Madrid, 31 January - 1 February 2000.
ASM00, SMHI, Norrköping, 27-29 March 2000.
MGM2, Norrköping, 27 March & 29 March 2000.
HAC, SMHI, Norrköping, 10-11 April 2000.
MGM3, ECMWF, Reading, 10 May 2000.
HIRLAM Council, Bremen, 28 June 2000.
MGM4, one telephone conference during summer, possibly another one.
KNMI member institute visit, 11-12 September 2000.
MGM(5), KNMI, 12 September 2000.
HAC, DNMI, Oslo, 30-31 October 2000.
DNMI member institute visit, November 2000 (preliminarily).
MGM(6), DNMI, November 2000.