Interaction between forecasters and model developers within MetCoOp

Lars Berggren,Eerik Saarikalle,Anders Wettergren,Kertu Sild,Reima Eresmaa,Gunnar Noer,Carl Fortelius

doi:10.5194/ems2022-190

Abstract

&lt;p&gt;MetCoOp is a co-operation for operational short range numerical weather forecasting formed by the &lt;em&gt;Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET), Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and Estonian Environment Agency (ESTEA). &lt;/em&gt;MetCoOp forms a part of the United Weather Centre (UWC) initiative, aiming for common NWP-production by ten European countries in 2027. MetCoOp delivers the convection permitting LAM ensemble MEPS with 5 new members generated every hour, and the hourly updated deterministic very-short-range suite MNWC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The interaction between forecasters and developers has been an important part of MetCoOp since its initiation as a bilateral co-operation between SMHI and MET in 2010. To this end, users and developers at the participating institutes come together weekly at regular video conferences and twice every year for a three-day face-to-face working meeting. Recommendations of the users play an important part in the procedure for introducing new developments into operational use. Typically, forecasters from each institute give their recommendations concerning forecast suites undergoing pre-operational testing based on their own experiences and assessment reports provided by the developers. Furthermore, duty forecasters are engaged in compiling monthly and seasonal verification reports showing the long-term evolution of MetCoOp forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the regular video conferences incidents, updates, developments, meteorological performance, and other current events are discussed. Reviews of the meteorological quality of operational and pre-operational forecast suites are a fixed item in these &quot;thursday-meetings&quot;, and often trigger vigorous discussion. Developers and users of MetCoOp forecasts take turns delivering these reviews, presenting deterministic and probabilistic verification scores and diagnostics, or cases of particular interest, and everybody is encouraged to sign up for giving a presentation. At the face-to-face meetings MetCoOp staff exchange experiences, work together, and make plans for future developments. At these meetings half a day is devoted to presenting and responding to forecaster feedback from each institute. Summary notes of the video conferences and face-to-face meetings, including slides, are available for future reference on the internal MetCoOp wiki-pages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

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