5th ACCORD Newsletter, published on 27 March 2024 | |
We welcome herewith the 5th ACCORD Newsletter. The previous ACCORD newsletter (NL4) was published in June 2023 and incidentally was the last one under the lead of Patricia. Our former CSS however still is present with us as is illustrated in this newsletter. From June last year until March this year, quite some activity has taken place and a number of events have been organized. They are not specifically described in the newsletter however it might be worth mentioning a few highlights here. In the autumn 2023, the preparations for the ACCORD scientific (and technical) strategy for the next five year period (2026-2030) have entered their concrete steps, with the Assembly on 4 December providing a few first orientations. The Assembly also has approved the appointment of a Documentation Officer who will soon be officially announced. At the level of governance, efforts are continuing in order to define a strategic vision for the expansion of international collaboration (and membership) in ACCORD, triggered by the very concrete example of the request by the Indonesian NHMS to join our consortium. Back to managerial considerations and to this newsletter (NL5), it is the first one produced under the lead of our new CSS Anne-Lise, whose involvement in ACCORD has already been welcomed by a number of key actors of the consortium. In the first set of papers of NL5, the reader will find a large variety of contributions relating to validation and verification in a broad scope. The papers comprise use cases for a 750m model configuration with an emphasis on the impact of the LBC strategy (by our Irish colleagues), statistical verification (Alaro-Romania), the evaluation of a new model version based on CY46 (AEMET), the evaluation of an offline version of SURFEX with TEB over Algiers. The ACCORD team of Geosphere Austria is presenting the work on computing and using a high resolution reanalysis ensemble, the kind of dataset that recently has gained an increased interest ranging from verification and calibration purposes to training AI/ML tools. Last in order but not least in importance, an update on the progress and plans regarding the common verification tool “harpSpatial” is provided by a few of our key developers of the tool. The second set of contributions include the use of a CNN for statistical post-processing and its evaluation on surface parameters (by our Algerian colleagues), a specific case study of the forecast of a Derecho case (IMGW-Poland) and two national team contributions (an overview of activity by the Polish team and the design of an EPS under construction by our Turkish ACCORD team). I wish all readers, whether close or somewhat further away from ACCORD NWP activities, a good time consulting this NL5. | |
4th ACCORD Newsletter, published on 19 June 2023 | |
We welcome herewith the 4th ACCORD Newsletter. The 4th ACCORD Newsletter contains a fair limited number of contributions (seven) however it reaches slightly more than 50 pages in length. The recently held ASW, with its large number of sometimes very high-quality contributions, might eventually have been a reason preventing more contributions from being received (rather than the opposite). In this volume, you will be able to read an update about the progress on “harp” and a recent working week, complemented by two contributions that illustrate efforts on meteorological verification by two Member Institutes. The other scientific articles provide insight in research work on data assimilation and EPS. In link with probabilistic modelling, we welcome a new Doctor from Belgium ! Talking about welcoming … and saying goodbye. The last ASW in Tallinn gave the opportunity to ACCORD staff to meet a last time with Patricia before she leaves the consortium activity, and her role as CSS, for retirement. I use the opportunity of this editorial to thank Patricia again for her instrumental role in our consortium efforts, during the ALADIN times, in the context of the ALADIN-LACE-HIRLAM convergence process and in the very first years of ACCORD. Her steady involvement and ability to propose imaginative organizational solutions definitely have been a tremendous advantage for ACCORD. The conclusion to this Newsletter introduction however shall remain a welcoming, since from 1 September 2023 our new CSS Anne-Lise Dhomps will officially join the ACCORD activities. Anne-Lise has been working under several project contracts at MF in the field of observations for data assimilation, and the CSS position is a new motivating challenge for her. We are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration with our new CSS and wish her all the best in this important central position in the consortium. | |
3rd ACCORD Newsletter, published on 24 October 2022 | |
We welcome herewith the 3rd ACCORD Newsletter. Since the publication of NL2, we from the ACCORD community have experienced the increasing possibilities to meet in-person in fairly large-scale events. After two online venues in 2020 and 2021, the 2022 All Staff Workshop could be organized in hybrid mode in Ljubljana, on the invitation of our Slovenian colleagues. Along the same lines, ACCORD scientific visits and working weeks usually have taken place in hybrid mode. The outcome of some of the scientific visits and working weeks organized in our consortium is reflected in the material presented in this NL3. When looking at the content of NL3, you will discover progress on new facilities in data assimilation, you will be updated on the use of Stochastic Parameter Perturbations in Harmonie-Arome EPS and on the technical work carried out recently in order to clean up the data flow for aerosols in our common codes. While the mainstream R&D in ACCORD clearly goes towards km-scale and sub-km scale modeling, the contribution by the team of Morocco reminds us that we have a few larger-scale configurations still in use throughout our community. A constant aspect in the NLs so far has been that several teams use to propose contributions about verification methodologies, codes for MQA or results from daily monitoring. NL3 thus includes several such papers, from methods to codes and verification routine evaluation. The final words of the editorial lines are an opportunity to remember our colleague Andrey Bogatchev (Bulgaria) who has left us very recently. | |
2nd ACCORD Newsletter, published on 28 February 2022 | |
We welcome herewith the 2nd ACCORD Newsletter. In this NL2, several articles refer to common ACCORD efforts, such as the first thematic working weeks, consortium-wide questionnaires to better understand how the many different teams work, results from the first ACCORD-supported visits. The pandemic situation has remained an important factor in our scientific organization, forcing quite often to use video-meeting facilities as the only possible solution. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the first in-person meeting for working together on MUSC, as well as a few scientific visits that could take place. Their outcome is reported in several contributions to NL2. Like in NL1, a number of articles refer to Meteorological Quality Assurance and status reporting on national NWP systems. These contributions are found in the first part of NL2. The other thematic contributions refer to surface modelling, very high resolution modelling (hectometric or in link with LES), EPS. One specific contribution describes a starting project aimed at building an aerosol-chemistry library of codes shared by all teams in the MF Research Dept. We do thank the contributors to newsletter number 2, and hope all ACCORD staff members find a good time reading its content. | |
1st ACCORD Newsletter, published on 5 October 2021 | |
We welcome herewith the very first ACCORD Newsletter, which gives an opportunity to look back at the first steps of our new consortium, with an overview article about the many facets of governance, management, bodies and tools that now form the structural backbone of ACCORD. Model evaluation and validation appear in many of the contributions. Proposals of novel evaluation methods (like for extreme precipitation events), implementation of a new routine verification environment by one ACCORD member, specific evaluation of a new code cycle version installed on a home HPC, all provide different points of view about the quality assurance efforts in the consortium. Fog or visibility are being addressed in four different papers of this newsletter, from various perspectives (climatology, verification, research with very high resolution configurations), illustrating the scientific challenges in this area and certainly addressing (if only indirectly) the expectations by our users. Two articles address the challenge of forecasting temperature in mountain areas with deep valleys. One paper explains how a high resolution LAM can be used in comparison with a coarser resolution global model for assessing the impact of sub-grid orographic drag in the global model. Physiography data are addressed in several contributions and are likely to be a recurrent topic in the newsletter, given the needs for both accurate and new information for very high resolution modeling. A few contributions describe progress done within the CSC physics, EPS and data assimilation systems. The continuation of the DasKIT program within ACCORD is illustrated both by an overview article and by the realization of one member institute. Techniques from Artificial Intelligence, like neural networks, are now more and more used in post-processing and downstream applications and there are several examples provided in this newsletter. Their use within the NWP codes remains an open area of research. On the side of technology, making the NWP codes more easily portable and ready to face the challenges of novel HPC architectures, is discussed in two articles. One, regarding cloud services, illustrates furthermore the potential possibilities offered by cloud-based technology. We thank the contributors to newsletter number 1, and hope all ACCORD staff members find a good time reading its content. | |
Previous newsletters: joint ALADIN-HIRLAM NL: available on the ALADIN website |