ALADIN developments in Toulouse during the first quarter of 1999
During the last months, GMAP offices have given to all ALADIN
visitors and GMAP people the impression that they were less crowded than
usual. It was not only a feeling. Only 32 persons (and only 2/3 of visitors)
coming from 9 countries on 8 different funding) during this quarter. Their
commun effort exceeds 50 people.month : few people but efficient ones !...
This quarter was more dedicated to maintenance (with the
phasing) with I. Gospodinov, P. Neytchev, W. Sadiki, C. Soci and M. Zitouni
(see 1.). Developments were mainly realized by PhD students (D. Banciu, I.
Gospodinov, F. Vana and M. Zagar). During the final stays on 1998 embassy
support, both developments and validation studies were realized (see 2.).
1. Main events in Toulouse this quarter
Most of the effort was devoted to the preparation
of cycle 10, again, and the modifications required by the new parameterization
of soil freezing. The full Toulouse team was involved in these task, helped by
a few brave visitors : Plamen Neytchev, Wafaa Sadiki and Meriem Zitouni.
2. Other visitors research or
development studies that ended during this quarter
Progress in scientific or technical aspects was rather the
part of the 13 other ALADIN visitors :
- Thanks to Cornel Soci, an up-to-date documentation of CANARI
is available ! You can find it on public-ftp : canari_doc.ps
- Dagmar Dufkova and Françoise Taillefer worked on
another application of ALADIN for the forecast of tropical cyclones, in the
framework of a COMPARE experiment. The technical environment is now ready and
the first results promising. This study will be continued both in La
Réunion and in Prague.
- Marta Janiskova helped the 4d-Var ARPEGE team to further
improve the simplified physics package, then left for ECMWF.
- Olivier Latinne studied the feasibility and the impact of a
mixed coupling for ALADIN-Belgique : with ALADIN-France up to 36h, with ARPEGE
from 36h to 48h.
- Richard Mladek finished the MAP experiment of an
inter-comparison of forecasted precipitations over the Alps.
- Vladimir Pastircak and Jean-Marcel Piriou managed to merge the
latest contributions to the parameterization of convection and found some
consistent tunings.
- André Simon and Marjan Sandev analysed thoroughly some
severe forecast failures of last winter, and studied their sensitivity to
changes in initial conditions or in some tunings in physics, but didn't find
any definitive explanation.
- Valery Spiridonov and Ilian Gospodinov enabled a large
progress in the implementation of a new, and better, semi-lagrangian scheme,
and pointed out some possible improvements in the operational one.
- Petra Smolikova, with some help from Radmila Bubnova, designed
a new formulation of semi-lagrangian interpolators to further avoid orographic resonance.
- Malgorzata Szczech and Jadwiga Woyciechowska updated Verif-Pack.
3. Other research or development
studies by the Toulouse permanent staff
- nothing to report during this "phasing" quarter.
