Supplementary material to “Improving High-Impact Weather Forecasts”

Steven Worley and Doug Schuster, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado

Phillipe Bougeault and Baudouin Raoult, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK

De Hui Chen and Jiandong Dong, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing

Citation:

Worley, S., D. Schuster, P. Bougeault, B. Raoult, D. H. Chen, and J. Dong (2008), Improving high-impact weather forecasts, Eos Trans. AGU, 89(36), 330–331. [Full Article (pdf)]

Table S1. TIGGE parameter fields, level category (pl = pressure level, pt = potential temperature level, pv = potential vorticity level, sl = single level), scientific units, and Archive inclusion indicator (‘x’) for the Data Providers as of June 2008. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), U.K. Met Office (UKMO), Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Centre Météorologique Canadien (CMC), Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BoM), Météo-France (MetF), Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC).


Figure 1 Schematic of TIGGE data flow and transport methods used between Archive and Data Provider Centers. Center definitions are as in Table S1.


Worley Figure

TIGGE Archive, Forecast Data for Weather Research

The TIGGE Archive Centers have designed systems to receive, organize, and distribute global ensemble forecast data from 10 international Data Providers. The scientific community defined the data requirements and recognized that it was important to have a standard set of global parameter fields in the same scientific units so comparison across centers would be easy. Five parameters are available on eight pressure levels (1000, 925, 850, 700, 500, 300, 250 and 200 hPa) and in addition geopotential height is provided at 50 hPa (Table S1). Potential vorticity on the 320 °K potential temperature surface and potential temperature and wind velocity components on the ± 2 potential vorticity surface supplement the vertical column data. Finally, 28 single level fields are included (Table S1). Details about the format and coding of the data are available at the ECMWF TIGGE website (http://tigge.ecmwf.int/tigge/d/show_archive/table=parameters/).

The Unidata Internet Data Distribution, Local Data Manager (IDD/LDM) (http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/) system is the primary data transport mechanism used between the Archive Centers. Data Providers use a combination of IDD/LDM, FTP, and HTTP to deliver data to the Archives in near real-time (Figure 1).

Significant effort has been made by each Data Provider to create as many of the recommended TIGGE parameter fields as possible. Currently, the pressure level parameters are complete from all Providers and to a lesser degree each is providing single level, isentropic level, and potential vorticity level data (Table S1).

Data are available for download through the following Archive Center web portals:

The TIGGE Working Group international representatives and major contributor at the Archive Centers are, Philippe Bougeault1, Zoltan Toth2, De Hui Chen3, Beth Ebert4, Young Youn Park5, Pedro Silva Dias6, Richard Swinbank7, Laurie Wilson8, Yoshiaki Takeuchi9, Warren Tennant10, Jean Nicoleau11, Steven Worley12, Barbara Brown12, Tom Hamill13, Baudouin Raoult1, Manuel Fuentes1, Joerg Urban1, Doug Schuster12, Dave Stepaniak12, Hannah Wilcox12, Jiandong Dong3, and Tiziana Paccagnella14.

1 European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK
2 National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Washington DC, USA
3 China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China
4 Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia
5 Korean Meteorological Agency, Seoul, Korea
6 Centro De Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos, Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil
7 Meteorological Office, Exeter, UK
8 Recherce en Prévision, Dorval, Canada
9 Japanese Meteorological Agency, Tokyo, Japan
10 South African Weather Service, Pretoria, South Africa
11 Météo-France, Toulouse, France
12 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
13 NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA
14 Agenzia Regionale Prevenzione e Ambiente, Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, Italy