Source : The Parliament Mag par Umberto Modigliani, ECMWF Deputy Director of Forecasts, responsible, with the department director, continuous production of forecasts and relations with users.
Early October, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) will take a big step forward by making hundreds of its forecast maps available to everyone free of charge.
The changes are part of a broader European initiative to make public sector data free and open, encourage innovation and support a thriving data-driven digital economy.
Thus far, full access to these forecast maps was restricted to the national meteorological and hydrological services of the Member States and the ECMWF Cooperating States, to members of the World Meteorological Organization and commercial customers. Access was subject to a series of customized licenses and high royalties.
The maps will cover the entire world, All types of weather situations, including extreme events, and, which is very important, will also include probability-based information, providing insights into confidence in forecasts.
The forecasts of precipitation and mean sea level pressure are just one example of the hundreds of ECMWF maps that will be made available.
The forecast maps will be free and open, so that users will be able to share, redistribute and adapt information according to their needs, even for commercial applications, provided that ECMWF is mentioned as the source. These changes also mean the shift to an open data policy for historical information in ECMWF's huge stockpile, which contains billions of weather fields, including recent and past forecasts. It represents the largest archive of this type of data in the world.
Rolf Brennerfelt, Chair of the ECMWF Political Advisory Committee explains :
"The societal benefits associated with free and open data are significant. We recognize that with change comes financial challenges, But the benefits outweigh these challenges. We are in a period of transition, and this first batch of data made freely available is a very good start and illustrates our commitment to this principle."
Under the EU's Open Data Directive, EU Member States will be required to make as much information available as possible for re-use. Weather forecasts are considered "high-value" data, whose reuse is associated with particularly important benefits for society and the economy.
The EU's Copernicus Earth Observation Programme (¹), several elements of which are implemented by ECMWF, Already applying, and this since its creation, A policy of free and open data. With several thousand users, The program offers a multitude of examples of the benefits that open data can bring.
This gradual shift towards free and open data aims to support creativity and innovation in scientific research as well as meteorological applications, and should allow scientific advances, more necessary and critical social and economic.
And then ?
At time, Umberto Modigliani only talks about forecast maps, but Rolf Brennerfelt speaks of a transition period, of a first batch of data being a good start. It is reasonable to hope that, following the initiative of Météo-France, data in GRIB format will be freely accessible. We will finally be able to benefit from IFS models for free (²), Hirlam, and others who are known to be among the best in the world.
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(¹) After having successfully coordinated European MyOcean projects since 2009, Mercator Ocean was officially appointed by the European Commission on 11 November 2014 to implement and operate the "Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service" in the framework of the European Earth Observation Programme Copernicus models.
(²) See Forecasting Models In the Glossary
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See related articles :
ECMWF weather data soon open to public [1st part]
The weather models war will take place [Update]
Météo-France GRIB files finally for free
Plea for free European data
Done. Many maps are available on their website. There is really something to study. But be careful, many maps are reserved for specialists or amateurs of ensemble forecasts and other statistical tools.
Actually. But what we are most waiting for is a GRIB file server for the IFS.