Minutes of the 3rd plenary E-GVAP meeting, 10-16 2007-01-16 at the KNMI, Netherlands. ------------------------------------------ These minutes should be seen in connection with the presentations from the meeting, which are available at: http://egvap.dmi.dk/private/third-plenary.html. The file with presentations include status reports handed in by members unable to partake in the meeting (notice that some of those reports were included directly in the 'DMI' contribution to the meeting). Thanks for the reports. Many thanks to Siebren and co-workers for organising the meeting and to KNMI for housing it. Participants ------------- Representing E-GVAP member institutes: Belgium - Absent Denmark - Henrik Vedel Finland - Reima Eresmaa Iceland - Absent Ireland - Absent Netherlands - Siebren de Haan Norway - Sofus Linge Lystad Spain - Enric Tarradellas Sweden - Martin Ridal Switzerland - Absent United Kingdom - John Nash, Jonathan Jones. Other people: France - Michel Mauprivez from Meteo-France was invited. Agenda ------ 1 National member reports 2 Presentation from Meteo-France 3 Status of E-GVAP 4 Discussion of updated version of proposed MoU between EUREF and DMI/E-GVAP/EUMETNET. 5 Report from expert group on data processing. 6 Next meeting(s). 7 Other matters. The meeting was held about 1 year and 9 months into E-GVAP. The central issues of the meeting were: - Making of an MoU between EUREF and us that is acceptable to the EUMETNET Council (and EUREF). - Development of GPS observing system in 'poor' E-GVAP countries. - E-GVAP and Meteo-France. 1 National member reports. -------------------------- See above mentioned presentations. In addition it was mentioned that: Belgish data are to some degree available for other to process. However, indications are that processing within Belgium will start again during 2007, either at meteorological institute or ROB. We decide to wait and see until next plenary meeting, in order not to complicate matters. There is currently no use of GPS data in Belgish meteorology. There is a small increase in the amount of Spanish sites. Not decided who does processing in the future. IGN process data, but not in real time. It was agreed that the processing centre at UK Met Office could, at least for a period, process the Spanish data should that become necessary. There is a bit of extra capasity at UK MetO, and the Icelandic data could move to the Nordic processing centre at SMHI, when that becomes operational. It was agreed that improvement of the coverage of Spain should be a prime focus point for E-GVAP. And that one important aspect of plenary meetings is the possibility to assist one another in such matters, by sharing of resources and knowledge. At INM gb GPS data are assimilated passively, awaiting more manpower for work on active data assimilation. Data from Norway will be processed at the Nordic processing centres when it becomes operational. An investigation by Sofus has revealed the possibility of adding of the order 15 new GPS sites, located at oilrigs, to the Norwegian land sites that we know about. That will mean data from a very data sparse area, of interest to the countries surrounding the North Sea. There is no current work at met.no regarding assimilation of the GPS data. 2 Presentation from Meteo-France --------------------------------- See presentation by Michel. Meteo-France is collaborating with IGN (=SGN) about expanding the French GPS network and Meteo-France is planning (though not finally decided) to join E-GVAP. It appears very promising. Michel had listed a number of questions to E-GVAP (some technical about processing, some about what 'we' expect of Meteo-France in E-GVAP). While some answers were given during the meeting it was decided that Henrik will write a detailed answer to Meteo-France within two weeks (thanks to Siebren, Jonathan, and John for reviewing my answers). 3 Status of E-GVAP ------------------ See DMI report. - We decided to carry on with the current data distribution policy, ie. open to meteorological inst., GTS receiving inst. and inst. declaring their use as scientific and non commercial. - Decided to keep budget and move surplus travel money (for liaison, expert teams and project travel) to next year. - Year 1 milestones. Achived, except that the MoU with EUREF has not been finished. This should (and is) getting high priority. - Year 2 milestones. "Formal arrangements with national organisations assuring delivery of GPS data to hub for a multi-year period. Either via NMS or directly with E-GVAP." Achived in some countries, starting in some, missing in some. It was agreed that there is good progress in this area, and that a gradual improvement is natural. "Operation of quality measurement/report facility. Quality measured against NWP, radiosonde and other available met data. Reported quarterly." Achived, reported on web. "Workshop on the production and use of GPS data (possibly in connection with project meeting)." Discussed to postpone the workshop and look for a conference in connection with which to held the workshop. Key issues for next period, on top of what has been mentioned above. - Year 3 milestones. "Formal arrangements with facility which can process "raw" GPS data which might become available in Europe, but are not processed already by current centres for whatever reason." "Functioning automated quality control of GPS meteorological data against GPS meteorological data from nearby stations, other GPS networks with common stations, and against NWP data and other met. observations. Automated NRT feedback to owners of problematic stations and processing centres processing the station(s) in question. Periodic feedback to all involved parties." "Organised support for expansion of network in regions with poor coverage, and for GPS sites collocated with radiosonde sites, airport(AMDAR), and other met. sites.". It was agreed that a plan for the future data dissemination is to be made, moving gradually from primarily using a central server and ftp to using primarily GTS. Associated issues are data formats, and archiving of the data for the future. 4 Discussion of updated version of proposed MoU between EUREF and DMI/E-GVAP/EUMETNET. ------------------------------ A few members had small concerns about details of the proposed MoU. All can be solved without minor changes, Henrik will include those in the MoU and hand the updated version to EUREF and EUMETNET for approval, including a explanatory text to PB-OBS members and Council members. ------------------------------ 5 Report from expert group on data processing. --------------------------------------------- See the WG-report among the presentations and the WG minutes at the homepage. The most important item for E-GVAP members is the decission to identify a number of 'super-sites'. Those are sites housing both a good quality GPS reciever and either a regular radiosonde launch site and/or a WVR site. All processing centres will be requested to process data from the supersites. The purpose is to enable both intercomparison of the processing centre results in NRT (which will make possible fast detection of certain types of processing problems), and intercomparison between NRT solutions and post processed solutions and the additional observation data from radiosondes and WVRs, plus comparison with NWP model data that are to extracted for the same sites. In total this will help both to verify the observations and to identify superior processing methods/processing centres and learn from those. 6 Next meeting(s). ------------------ Next plenary meeting in Barcelona in June, hosted by INM. 7 Other matters. ---------------- Nothing Reporteur Henrik Vedel.