Please find the third Newsletter of HIRLAM-5, NL 37. From now on Technical Reports and Newsletters are printed directly from pdf files, thus digital all the way, bypassing the photographic reproduction of paper copies.
The Management Group visited an unusually rainy Norway in early November and a report is available here. 3D-VAR was run in parallel at DNMI at the time, and based on the better results, it became operational at the end of that month.
In this issue there is a report from the turbulence meeting at the end of November (also available on HE X NE T). There has been a lot of activity in this area, aiming to reduce the problems that have been seen in the Reference CBR version, see also last NL (36). Since the meeting, the instability problem in the new modified CBR has been solved and promising data assimilation and forecast tests have been done. Results will be shown at the ASM in Reykjavik. A fuller description of the corrections to the turbulent fluxes in the long-lived stable ABL is in this issue.
A concentrated effort on implementing the Météo-France GWD parameterisation has taken place following a planning meeting in Stockholm 19 October. A report is on HE X NE T and the interesting results including the extra complications for climate generation are presented in an article.
Another area of major activity is the convection-condensation. The Kain-Fritsch convection scheme together with Rash and Kristjanson condensation has been used and tested by several groups. A meeting was held in September to gather results and conclusions. The scheme(s) may have positive impacts for almost all parameters, particularly at high resolution. Two articles present such results. Additional staff resources will become available to the Project, in order to carry on the implementation for the Reference system and perform research at high resolution (10 km).
The ISBA scheme is near to implementation; assimilations with forecasts have been run for four seasons and with nice reductions of 2m temperature biases (and RMS) almost all the time. It will be reported about later, at least for the ASM. Please also check HE X NE T. This is the fastest channel for recent reports many times.
The ECMWF Optional Project for Boundary Conditions is running, but so far it has only been possible to disseminate rotated or non-rotated frame grids at 0.5° or a multiple thereof. ECMWF is working on a solution using the in common with Météo-France developed interpolation/postprocessing package FULLPOS. In March it should be possible to request also other resolutions. Rotated frames are now possible to retrieve via MARS from the normal operational 12 UTC products (for e.g. testing). The necessary modifications to handle frames are introduced in Hirlam 4.9.2 / 5.0.
Mini-SMS has been developed further and tried by some groups. It will be used with the 3D-VAR implementation in the Reference system. The efficiency at ECMWF is of major concern, until the mini-SMS is introduced, so please try it out as soon as possible following mails from Gerard Cats and documentation on HE X NE T.
The (relatively) new version of Hirlam, 4.9.0, with semi-Lagrangian as default, has been extensively tested against the DMR version, 4.7.4, see a short summary at the end of this NL. This is the first such major exercise on the ECMWF computer system and many difficulties of technical kinds resulted in that only one period, but with several options, was run and found to be of equivalent quality as earlier version. The Management Group has approved this version (4.9.0) as Reference.
| ASM in Reykjavik |
The ASM in Reykjavik seems to be well attended with some 36 participants, according to the preliminary notifications. I would like to remind you to inform Sigurdur if you like to stay in the hotel for additional nights (more than the Wednesday night) and, of course, if you need any extra room for accompanying family members. It is probably wise to book flights towards the end of February, even though there may be some cheaper offers nearer the date. Finally, please confirm your exact dates of travel and your talks at the ASM before the end of March. The format will be similar to last year's ASM, with operational, scientifical, technical and synoptic presentations. There should also be working groups sessions, for convening of some of the sub-projects, and also I would like to discuss ideas on requirements and organisation for a continuation of the Hirlam Project (no. 6?).
Per Undén, 8 February, 2001.
| Recent meetings: |
· HIRLAM Advisory Committee meeting, 30-31 October, DNMI, Oslo.
· Hirlam meeting on GWD (MISU, Stockholm, 19 October 2000).
· Hirlam Management Group visit to DNMI, Oslo, 6-7 November 2000.
· HIRLAM-5 Management Group Meeting 5, 7 November, DNMI, Oslo.
· HIRVDA working and planning meeting at DMI, 27-30 November 2000.
· HIRLAM Council Meeting No. 2, 28 November, Reading.
· Hirlam meeting on Turbulence (DMI, Copenhagen, 30 Nov.-1 Dec. 2000).
· HIRLAM-5 Management Group Meeting 6, 19 December, telephone conference.
| Forthcoming meetings: |
· HIRLAM-5 Management Group Meeting 7, 12-13 February, FMI, Helsinki.
· Hirlam/SRNWP workshop on verification research, 23-24 April 2001.
· Hirlam All Staff Meeting, Reykjavik, 7-9 May.
· HIRLAM Advisory Committee meeting, May, Lappland, Finland.
· HIRLAM Council Meeting No. 3, 27 June, Reading.
· Hirlam/SRNWP workshop on surface processes and other physical parameterisation, prel. October 2001.