19/September/2024
Issue affecting C3S seasonal forecasts verification plots
Some of the plots routinely displayed on our verification page (C3S seasonal forecasts verification plots) have been temporarily removed, upon finding them to have been affected by a computational error in our processing chain. The affected diagnostics are the maps of correlation for the 3-month aggregations, for all the variables.
Once corrected versions of these diagnostics are computed, an announcement will be posted on these pages and the revised plots will be uploaded to the webpage. In the meantime users can reproduce these plots by following the workflow described in the C3S Jupyter Notebook tutorial on seasonal forecasts verification (https://ecmwf-projects.github.io/copernicus-training-c3s/sf-verification.html)
10/September/2024
The new Climate Data Store (CDS-Beta) is now live and it soon will become the operational instance of the CDS. Users are encouraged to migrate as soon as they can
https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/
Remember that you need to have an ECMWF account to use CDS-Beta. Your existing CDS credentials will not work in CDS-Beta! If you do not yet have an ECMWF account, please create one here, then with your ECMWF login account, login to CDS-Beta and follow instructions online.
API users need to upgrade their cdsapi package and update their credentials.
You can find the most relevant and up-to-date information about this migration in the following page: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/CKB/Please+read%3A+CDS+and+ADS+migrating+to+new+infrastructure%3A+Common+Data+Store+%28CDS%29+Engine
Important to note:
- Please migrate to using CDS-Beta by 26 September 2024 when the current CDS will be shutdown.
- CDS Toolbox will be discontinued and is not migrated to CDS-Beta.
- A new conversion to netCDF tool is in place in the new CDS
- The seasonal forecast component of C3S is based on GRIB files stored at ECMWF MARS archive. Therefore those files are to be considered the operational output of the service.
- Any conversion to netCDF offered by the CDS has been so far considered as 'experimental' and for the time being it will continue like that with this new conversion tool. Any routine downstream use of netCDF files must strongly consider certain degree of flexibility to adapt to further future changes.
- There is currently no comprehensive list of changes to the netCDF outputs derived from this change of conversion tool, but users need to be aware they might affect the way third-party tools interact with the netCDF files. Some examples of those changes are the following:
- Change of file format to netCDF4
- Changes to file metadata (additional global and variable attributes)
- Changes in the order of dimensions in the data arrays
- Changes to the time coordinates to fully describe the start date (forecast_reference_time/indexing_time), the leadtime (forecast_period/forecastMonth) and the validity time (valid_time)
- Users of the CDS API would still be able to retrieve netCDF data using the same conversion tool available in the legacy CDS. But this is considered deprecated and will be no longer supported.
- In order to use that legacy conversion users would need to add the following in their python cdsapi scripts
"data_format": "netcdf_legacy"
- In order to use that legacy conversion users would need to add the following in their python cdsapi scripts
19/July/2024
C3S graphical and data products from July 2024 forecast
The issue reported on 10 July 2024 (below), related to errors in the July-start forecast data from ECCC's new operation system, CanSIPSv3.0, has now been resolved. Corrected data has been acquired, processed and archived, and ECCC graphical and data products have been published. Data with July starts from ECCC's systems 4 and 5 (in the CDS notation) can now be downloaded from the CDS. Any data from these systems downloaded from ECMWF's MARS archive before 19 July 2024 may be flawed; data downloaded after this date is expected to be error-free.
Unfortunately, hindcast data with August start from these new systems have not yet been made available (in line with the usual practice of publishing hindcasts at least one month before the corresponding real-time forecasts). This data will be processed and published, at the latest at the same time as the August 2024 forecast. The advance publication of hindcast data will be resumed as soon as possible.
17/July/2024
C3S graphical and data products from July 2024 forecast
The corrected DWD July-initialised real-time forecast has now been published, both in the set of graphical products on the website (https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal/) and in the respective datasets of the CDS. Data downloaded from the CDS after 16 July 2024 13 UTC is expected to be error-free. The original error only affected one member of the real-time DWD forecast ensemble; however, all ensemble members have now be re-archived.
10/July/2024
C3S graphical and data products from July 2024 forecast
Due to potential data quality issues, the suite of graphical seasonal forecast products with July 2024 initial conditions (available at https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal/) do not include the contribution from DWD, at the time of publication. (They also do not include ECCC forecasts - see announcement below.) The DWD July real-time forecast data has been processed and archived, and it is downloadable from the CDS forms and API, but we do not endorse its use until further investigation is completed. Initial examination points to the 22nd member of the ensemble (in the order archived) having been started from wrong initial conditions; at present, there is no guarantee that the other members are 'correct'.
10/July/2024
Update on changes to ECCC operational forecasting systems:
Due to issues with the acquisition of data from the new Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) seasonal forecasting systems, the ECCC July 2024 forecast will not be available, at the usual publication time, as data or graphical products. Neither forecast nor hindcast data are available via the CDS forms of the CDS API; however hindcast and real-time forecast data have been archived in MARS, but should not be used until further notice, pending tests to ensure data quality and consistency. ECCC is not part of the multi-system combination this month.
Products from ECCC's July 2024 forecast may be created and published by C3S at a later date, but the real-time multi-system combination will not be updated.
A reminder that the previous ECCC systems (CanCM4i and GEM5-NEMO) have been discontinued.
28/June/2024
Planned changes to operational forecasting systems:
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) will update its seasonal forecasting systems to new versions from July 2024. The new Canadian Seasonal to Interannual Prediction System version 3.0 (CanSIPSv3.0) is a multi-model ensemble composed of two individual forecast systems CanESM5 and GEM5.2-NEMO. ECCC's operational forecast system is one of the components of the C3S seasonal forecast multi-system.
- With the introduction of the new systems, both contributions (to C3S) from the current ECCC CanSIPSv2.1 system (CanCM4i and GEM5-NEMO) will be discontinued
- Data availability
- Real-time forecast data for July 2024 will be published on 10 July at 12UTC.
- We are currently working on a tight schedule to process at C3S the July hindcast data for these new systems. Unfortunately, this means that for the next few months hindcast data will be made available much closer than usual to the release of the corresponding real-time forecast. Updated information on hindcast data availability will follow in the coming days.
22/March/2024
An issue potentially affecting C3S seasonal forecast data downloads from the CDS has been recently detected.
The source of the issue has been identified and the problem reverted, so CDS is now back to its correct behaviour. However, we strongly advise users which have requested data that matches the description below to repeat those downloads to ensure the data retrieved is correct.
The affected data downloads would have been those requesting data in netCDF format from one of the following seasonal forecast datasets (where the data is stored in GRIB) between Tuesday 19th of March and Thursday 21st of March (both included):
- Seasonal forecast daily and subdaily data on single levels
- Seasonal forecast subdaily data on pressure levels
- Seasonal forecast monthly statistics on single levels
- Seasonal forecast monthly statistics on pressure levels
- Seasonal forecast anomalies on single levels
- Seasonal forecast anomalies on pressure levels
CDS data requests matching that description have very likely received wrong data inside the netCDF files.
More details can be found in the complete issue description on the C3S User Forum: https://forum.ecmwf.int/t/check-your-recent-netcdf-files-downloaded-from-the-cds-and-ads-you-may-need-to-download-them-again/2280
11/December/2023
With the release of December 2023 forecasts (10th December 2023) a new view of the SST indices time series have been included for the ENSO regions in the C3S seasonal graphical products (https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal)
In addition to the plot showing individual ensemble members a new time series plot is now available showing some of the percentiles for each month's distribution. This was already available for the IOD indices and it has been now also extended to ENSO indices.
22/November/2023
Please note that a "data gap" issue has been documented in our C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues page affecting availability of MetOffice system 602 hindcast data for December nominal start dates (see details for issue G10. in the "Data gaps" table)
10/November/2023
Please note that a "data gap" issue has been documented in our C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues page affecting availability of MetOffice system 602 hindcast data for November nominal start dates (see details for issue G10. in the "Data gaps" table)
8/September/2023
Please note that a "data gap" issue has been documented in our C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues page affecting availability of MetOffice system 602 data for 8/August/2023 (see details for issue G10. in the "Data gaps" table)
9/August/2023
Please note that a "data gap" issue has been documented in our C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues page affecting availability of MetOffice system 602 data for 15/July/2023 (see details for issue G9. in the "Data gaps" table)
20/July/2023
New C3S seasonal forecast products available: 10m wind speed and sea ice concentration plots; additional documentation and training materials
Soon after the release of our July 2023 seasonal forecasts new features have been made available to users of the C3S seasonal forecast service:
- New graphical products for 10m wind speed and sea ice concentration
- A new Copernicus Knowledge Base (CKB) article describing the processing performed to create all C3S seasonal forecast products
C3S seasonal forecast product descriptions - A new Jupyter Notebook included in the "C3S Data Tutorials" training materials showing how to produce some verification metrics and scores equivalent to those currently provided in the CKB:
https://ecmwf-projects.github.io/copernicus-training-c3s/sf-verification.html
9/June/2023
New C3S seasonal forecast products available: total column water quantities data and SST indices verification plots
With the release of our June 2023 seasonal forecasts a couple of additions have been made to the offering of the C3S seasonal forecast service:
- New variables for water quantities integrated over the whole atmospheric column (water vapour, cloud liquid water and cloud ice water) are available. Initially, in June 2023, these data variables are available from ECMWF SEAS5, CMCC SPS3.5 and DWD GCFS2.1.
- New verification plots have been added to our C3S seasonal forecasts verification plots page, including correlation for SST-based indices (NINO regions and Indian Ocean Dipole)
Please also note that a "data gap" issue has been documented in our C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues page affecting availability of NCEP CFS2 data for 22/May/2023 (see details for issue G8. in the "Data gaps" table)
10/March/2023
New C3S seasonal forecast dataset and earlier publication date
With the release of our March 2023 seasonal forecasts a new dataset has been included, containing global ocean monthly data for a set of variables in the upper part of the ocean.
More details here: Seasonal forecast monthly averages of ocean variables
Additionally, we would like to remind our users that starting today, 10th March 2023, all the products from the C3S seasonal forecast component are made publicly available on a slightly earlier schedules:
- 6th of the month at 12 UTC: ECMWF data will be available
- 10th of the month at 12 UTC: the remaining forecast systems data and all graphical products will be available
1/March/2023
Summary of new features in C3S seasonal forecast service
Around the release of our March forecast a few new features enhancing the service are being put in place, from changes in the publication date of the data and products, to the inclusion of new features in the web application displaying our graphical products, and including information about verification of the forecast systems. A new seasonal forecast dataset will be published in the CDS catalogue, as described below.
- Changes to publication dates: all graphical and data products are now published earlier than usual. Specifically:
- 6th of the month at 12 UTC: ECMWF data will be available
- 10th of the month at 12 UTC: the remaining forecast systems data and all graphical products will be available
- Change to the graphical products web page:
- A new application using ECMWF's OpenCharts engine integrated in the C3S website will replace the current page from 1st March 2023 at 12UTC
- WARNING: With this change the URL will be affected, and the URL for the new starting point through the graphical products will now be: http://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal/
- The new interface introduces some useful features, among others:
- Chartsets: allowing users to show side-by-side graphical products belonging to the same "chartset group" (gray bubbles above the plot thumbnail title).
- Share: this allows users to obtain a widget to be embedded in a web page or to share a given plot over social networks.
- Export: with the enhancements in this feature, on top of being able to export the plot and save it as an image (PNG/PDF), users will have access to an API allowing them to programatically access the plots of their choice.
- New contents in the graphical products:
- Starting from the February 2022 real-time forecast, monthly plots will be now also available, in addition to the 3-month aggregations in the new web interface
- Enhanced documentation with information about verification:
- Some verification metrics and scores for all current forecast systems, and the multi-system combination, will be made available as part of the C3S seasonal forecast documentation:
C3S seasonal forecasts verification plots - A Jupyter Notebook will be also soon released (date yet to be confirmed) allowing users to reproduce those plots and giving them a starting point to create similar ones for the variables of their interest.
- Some verification metrics and scores for all current forecast systems, and the multi-system combination, will be made available as part of the C3S seasonal forecast documentation:
- New CDS dataset with ocean variables:
- A new dataset containing 1-month averages of 2-D fields for variables coming from the ocean component of the contributing forecast systems.
- The dataset called "Seasonal forecast monthly averages of ocean variables" will be available here: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/seasonal-monthly-ocean?tab=overview
- The dataset will be published with the update of the March real-time forecast at 12UTC on the 10th March 2023
13/Jan/2023
Introduction of new features in plots and data
With the release of January 2023 C3S seasonal forecast the following changes have been introduced:
- New observational dataset in SST indices (NINO, IOD) plots: ERA5 SST has been introduced to substitute NCEP OIv2. This affects all new plots created from January 2023, specifically all new real-time forecast plots released but also the updates with new observations to previously released plots: from April/2022 for NINO indices (March/2022 in the case of C3S multi-model and ECCC multi-model) and May/2022 for IOD
- New pressure level (1000hPa) available from UK MetOffice GloSea6 data
14/November/2022
Completion of ECMWF Data Handling System (DHS) move.
At 18:41 on Friday 11/November/2022 the disruption to the ECMWF DHS, where C3S seasonal forecast data is hosted, was declared as finished marking the successful completion of the move from Reading headquarters to Bologna Data Centre.
30/October/2022
Data availability during ECMWF DHS move
(Announcement date: 31/August/2022. Update: 30/October/2022)
- The completion of the DHS move has been now delayed to the end of the week commencing on 7 November.
- In these last stages of the DHS move some of the data previously available (and listed in the table below) may be temporarily unavailable until the full move is completed.
(Announcement date: 31/August/2022. Update: 12/October/2022)
The data listed in the following table is expected to be available during the limited access period (5-6 weeks from 8/Sep/2022) caused by ECMWF move of its Data Handling System to Bologna.
Users are encouraged to download before 8/Sep/2022 any data not listed in the table they might need during that period. Any change to this schedule will be announced here.
Data streams | Forecasting systems(1) | Nominal start dates |
---|---|---|
daily data | MetOffice GloSea6 (system=601) | Sep to Dec 1993-2016 |
All operational systems | Sep and Oct 2022 (2) | |
monthly data | All operational systems | Jun to Dec 1993-2016 |
All operational systems | Mar to Oct 2022 (2) | |
ECMWF SEAS5 (system=51) | Oct to Dec 1993-2016 | |
anomalies data (3) | All operational systems | Mar to Oct 2022 (2) |
NOTES:
(1) This is the list of all currently operational forecasting systems: ECMWF SEAS5, Météo-France System8, MetOffice GloSea6 (system=601), CMCC SPSv3.5, DWD GCFS2.1, NCEP CFSv2, JMA CPS3, ECCC CanCM4i and ECCC GEM5-NEMO
(2) Real-time forecast data won't be available until its usual release date (13th of the month at 12 UTC)
(3) This also includes the data used to compute the anomalies ("ensemble mean" and "hindcast climate mean") which are available via the "monthly" CDS datasets
USER ACTION REQUIRED
12/October/2022
Changes to operational forecast system from ECMWF
From November 2022 a new version of ECMWF SEAS5 output will substitute the current one. This new version (v5.1) will be labelled with the keyword system=51
- What are the changes in this new version of ECMWF SEAS5 data?
- A different interpolation tool has been used to produce the 1-degree grid, both for hindcasts and real-time forecasts.
- A new 1-degree grid, now consistent with the grid available from the other participating forecast systems. Specifically, it will have grid-points centered at half-degree latitude/longitude, and hence it has 180 values in the latitude coordinate (from -89.5 to 89.5) instead of the current 181 values (from -90 to 90)
- A couple of additions to complete the list of available variables: Top solar incoming radiation and 1000hPa level for the 5 variables available at pressure levels. Additionally, on top of the values of runoff, for SEAS5.1 both sub-surface and surface runoff will be also available.
- What are the implications for users of ECMWF SEAS5 data?
- From November 2022, only
system=51
real-time forecast data will be available from the CDS - Users will need to use
system=51
hindcast data alongside the new real-time forecasts.
Data from the current version (system=5
) should not be used, so those users with previously downloaded hindcast data will need to download the new version. - At the time of this announcement, hindcast data for October, November and December has been made available on the CDS
- The remaining start dates (from January to September) will be processed and published progressively following the calendar order. Details on their availability can be found in the "Hindcasts" table of the Summary of available data
- Please note that while the ECMWF DHS move hasn't been completed, not all data will be available from the CDS (details in the table above with "DATA AVAILABILITY DURING ECMWF DHS MOVE")
- From November 2022, only
- Why have these changes been introduced?
- When ECMWF SEAS5 was released in 2017, the C3S 1-degree version was created with the default interpolation tool (
emoslib
) available from MARS. With the migration of ECMWF computing infrastructure to its new Data Centre in Bologna, this tool has been discontinued. That means new real-time forecasts produced after the migration can't be produced anymore in a way consistent with the available SEAS5 hindcast in the CDS. After careful evaluation of the impact of the interpolation, it was decided to create a new version of the hindcast data. This has been labelled as SEAS5.1 and encoded with keyword system=51. - With this new version of SEAS5 hindcast, a couple of additional improvements were also included:
- A new 1-degree grid consistent with the one provided for other forecast systems (see details above)
- A couple of additions to the list of variables (see details above).
- When ECMWF SEAS5 was released in 2017, the C3S 1-degree version was created with the default interpolation tool (
12/October/2022
Changes to stratospheric (10hPa) zonal wind plots from the October 2022 real-time forecast release
A couple of bugs have been fixed which affected the plots shown here: https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/c3s_seasonal/
- Up to October 2022 for all systems, all available members for each nominal start date were plotted and used to compute the forecast ensemble mean. From October 2022, for lagged start date systems (at the time of the announcement this affects the UK MetOffice GloSea6 and JMA CPS3) only a subset of the most recent members will be used (see details in the information about "nominal start date") so the ensemble mean computations are consistent across all C3S products.
- For all forecast systems a coding bug was fixed that caused one real-time forecast member to be plotted twice (usually showing it as a thicker/darker blue line).
12/July/2022
An error has been identified in "sea surface temperature" and "land surface temperature" (called 'soil temperature level 1' in the CDS) data from CMCC SPSv3.5 forecasting system. The details can be found in the section "Not fixed errors" under the code E10 of our "Known issues" page
It affects the following data for those two variables:
- forecast data (daily data, monthly data and anomalies) for nominal start dates March, April, May, June and July 2022
According to CMCC report about the issue:
The problem only affects the points at the borders between the three realms (sea ice, ocean and land), and is due to a change in the land-sea or sea ice-sea mask interpolation algorithm, which was implemented in the forecasts (starting from March).
Therefore, the anomalies of the above mentioned variables show unrealistic patterns near the sea-land or sea-sea ice boundaries, because, in these grid points, the new interpolation algorithm has made the forecasts, from March onwards, inconsistent with the hindcasts.
Starting from the August 2022 real-time forecast, it will be restored the procedure used in the hindcasts.
9/May/2022
Reminder of impacts of ECMWF's Data Handling System (DHS) move to Bologna
As work to move ECMWF's DHS to Bologna progresses, the dates when users of C3S seasonal forecast data might experience disruptions are approaching.
- Two short dry-run tests successfully completed in April have paved the way for another, longer reduced service period in the coming weeks, lasting for 5 to 7 days; this will then be followed by the 4-week-long reduced service period during the actual move of the DHS infrastructure. The official announcements about the dates of these interruptions can be found in this link. This information will be updated as the work progresses so it is highly recommended you "watch" that page (see "Watch" button in the top right corner of the page).
- The expected impacts on the C3S seasonal forecast datasets are as follows:
- Data available during both future reduced service periods: real-time forecasts with start dates after March 2022 from all providers and hindcast data from MetOffice system=601 (produced on-the-fly) with start dates from April.
- Availability of other data is NOT guaranteed.
- Please note this includes hindcast data relevant to the start dates around these periods of reduced service, from providers other than the MetOffice. The recommendation for users is to ensure they have downloaded all hindcast data they may need well in advance of the start of these periods of reduced service.
11/ February/2022
- As it happens every year, label "system" for the UK Met Office contribution to C3S seasonal forecast activity will be updated to a new value (system=601) starting from March 2022 real-time forecasts.
- Please note that due to the production of hindcasts "on-the-fly", the CDS keyword 'system' does not have the same behaviour as for the other contributors. More info in the section "Versioning of forecasting systems contributing to C3S" of the Description of the C3S seasonal multi-system page.
3/January/2022
Changes to operational forecasting systems from Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
- A little later than previously announced, CPS3 hindcasts for February start dates are now available at the CDS.
- Description of this new forecasting system can be found here.
- Starting with February 2022 real-time forecast, JMA's contribution will be be from CPS3 forecasting system, while the contribution from CPS2 forecasting system will be discontinued.
- In this new system the horizontal resolution of the JMA data at C3S is upgraded to 1.25 x 1.25 degrees
NOTE: This is a different grid compared to the rest of C3S forecasting systems. You can retrieve a version of the data interpolated to the C3S 1-degree grid using the following CDS API keywords in your retrieval:
CDS API retrieval keywords for interpolation to C3S 1-degree grid"grid" : "1/1", "area" : "89.5/0.5/-89.5/359.5",
8/December/2021
Changes to operational forecasting systems from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
- As previously announced, GEM5-NEMO hindcasts for December start date are now available at the CDS.
- Starting with the December 2021 real-time forecast, ECCC contribution will be changed to CanSIPSv2.1 composed of CanCM4i and GEM5-NEMO forecasting systems. More details here
15/November/2021
Planned changes to operational forecasting systems:
- Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) contribution to C3S will update one of its seasonal forecasting system to a new version, GEM5-NEMO, from December 2021
- Hindcast data for December start dates from this new system will be available at the CDS during the week commencing on the 6th of December.
- Real-time forecast data for December 2021 will be published on 13th December at 12GMT.
- With the introduction of the new system, GEM5-NEMO, the contribution from the current GEM-NEMO system will be discontinued
- Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) contribution to C3S will update their forecasting system to a new version, CPS3, from February 2022
- Hindcast data for February start dates from this new system will be available at the CDS on January 2022 (date to be confirmed).
- Real-time forecast data for February 2022 will be published on 13th February at 12GMT
- With the introduction of the new system, CPS3, the contribution from the current CPS2 system will be discontinued.
12/October/2021
An issue with sporadic anomalous values in "2m dewpoint temperature" from Météo-France System8 has been identified. The details can be found in the section "Fixed errors" under the code E9 of our "Known issues" page
- It only affects hindcast data from member 3 for October 2009, both high frequency data (seasonal-original-single-levels) and monthly statistics (seasonal-monthly-single-levels).
- A very reduced amount of grid points and time steps present erroneous values of 1.e+20
- The data described might be affected by this issue if retrieved after its publication on 16th September 2021 and before the completion of the re-archival of the amended version (see details in "Known issues" page)
29/September/2021
An error has been identified in the "total cloud cover" data from JMA CPS2 forecasting system. The details can be found in the section "Not fixed errors" under the code E8 of our "Known issues" page
It affects all available data for that variable (daily data, monthly data and anomalies) both for real-time forecasts and hindcast dates.
Due to a bug during the data ingestion to the C3S archive the values of this parameter have been divided by 100.
6/July/2021
Changes to operational forecasting systems:
- As previously announced, Météo-France system 8 hindcasts for July start date are already available at the CDS.
- NOTE: this hindcast data will be only available via CDS-API until the official release of July 2021 forecast (12 UTC on the 13th July). See details and updates here.
- Description of this new forecasting system can be found here.
23/May/2021
Changes to operational forecasting systems:
- Météo-France contribution to C3S will come from their new seasonal forecasting system, System8, from July 2021
- Hindcast data for July start dates from this new system will be available at the CDS during the first week of July.
- Real-time forecast data for July 2021 will be published on 13th July at 12GMT
13/May/2021
Changes to operational forecasting systems:
- Seasonal forecasts from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) 's prediction system, CanSIPSv2, are included in the C3S multi-system from May 2021.
- This contribution is composed of two different forecasting systems: GEM-NEMO and CanCM4i. More details here.
- Data for all CDS datasets (daily/subdaily, monthly and anomalies) will be made available independently for those two forecasting systems.
- Graphical products labelled ECCC will be created as a multi-system combination of these two individual forecasting systems.
- Graphical products for the C3S multi-system: The two ECCC forecasting systems are first combined and their combination is then treated like each one of the other contributing forecasting centres (so that each centre contributes to the C3S multi-system with equal weight).
- Hindcast data for May start dates from these new systems is already available at the CDS.
- Real-time forecast data for May 2021 will be published on 13th May at 12GMT.
- This contribution is composed of two different forecasting systems: GEM-NEMO and CanCM4i. More details here.
11/Mar/2021
A data gap in MetOffice's GloSea6 forecast data has been reported as "Data gap G5" in C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues
- No data is available from MetOffice GloSea6 (system=600) for the following start dates: 22 and 23 February 2021
- An issue with assimilation of sea-ice data was reported by the MetOffice affecting forecasts initialised on 22 and 23 February 2021. Due to the potential impact of that wrong sea-ice initialisation throughout the forecast, those start dates haven't been processed by C3S.
2/Mar/2021
The integration into C3S seasonal forecast multi-system of ECCC forecasting systems, CanCM4i and GEM-NEMO, announced earlier (19th/January/2021) to happen with the release of March 2021 real-time forecasts has been delayed to April 2021.
16/Feb/2021
Changes to operational forecasting systems:
- MetOffice contribution to C3S will come from their new seasonal forecasting system, GloSea6, from March 2021
- Hindcast data for March start dates from this new system is already available at the CDS.
- Real-time forecast data for March 2021 will be published on 13th March at 12GMT
- A change in the labelling of 'system' versions for the MetOffice has been implemented. GloSea6 data will be initially labelled as system=600. More details here.
19/Jan/2021
Upcoming changes in the C3S seasonal forecast service planned to be implemented for the release of the March 2021 real-time forecast (13th March at 12GMT):
- A new forecasting system will be introduced from the MetOffice contribution to C3S, GloSea6. The on-the-fly hindcasts of the current system GloSea5-GC2-LI (GRIB system keyword=15) for the February nominal start date are the last ones to be published from that forecasting system.
- A new contribution from ECCC (Environment and Climate Change Canada) will be added consisting of their two forecasting systems CanCM4i and GEM-NEMO
More details about these planned changes will be soon notified. Please note this is just an early warning about the plans for implementation of those contributions and changes to that schedule are still possible.
14/Dec/2020
With the publication of the December 2020 C3S seasonal forecasts (released on the 13th December at 12UTC) a couple of new additions have been made to the catalogue of graphical products shown at https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/c3s_seasonal/:
- Time series of seasonal forecasts and their corresponding hindcast for the zonally averaged u-component of wind at 10hPa
- Evolution of probabilities for quartile-bounded categories (Percentiles 25 and 75) of the area-averaged monthly-mean sea-surface temperature anomaly computed over specified regions of the Tropical Pacific (the NINO 1+2, 3, 3.4 and 4 areas)
26/Oct/2020
An issue in the CDS infrastructure affecting some seasonal forecast retrievals has been identified. It will be tracked as error (E7b) in the seasonal forecast known issues page.
This error prevents users from getting all available members from CFSv2-v20110310 (NCEP CFSv2) data. This issue affects retrievals done after the release of the October 2020 forecast, which happened at 12UTC on the 13th of October 2020.
It affects all data available in the high-frequency (daily/subdaily) datasets:
Members with start time at 06h,12h and 18h are not being retrieved from the archive by the CDS and just members with start time at 00h are returned.
This is currently under investigation and it will be announced here once the issue has been resolved.
Update 27/October/2020
The issue described above has been solved at 16:15UTC on the 26/October/2020. All retrievals should be correct now, and just those retrievals performed between 13/Oct/2020 at 12UTC and 26/Oct/2020 at 16:15UTC have been affected.
13/Oct/2020
With the release of the October 2020 real-time forecast (at 12 UTC on 13th October) some additions will be introduced to the list of available forecasting systems. Specifically:
- Contribution from JMA CPS2 system will be included
- Upgrade of CMCC contribution, to the new operational seasonal forecasting system SPSv3.5 (system=35)
Additionally, with the release of the November 2020 real-time forecast (at 12 UTC on 13th November), another change of forecasting systems will be included. Specifically:
- Upgrade of DWD contribution to the new operational forecasting system GCFS2.1 (system=21)
Details about hindcast dates available can be found here. The complete list of parameters available for each forecasting system can be found here.
13/June/2020
- With the release of June 2020 real-time forecast (at 12UTC on the 13th June) some changes have been introduced to the geographical regions available at C3S seasonal forecast graphical products (https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/c3s_seasonal). Specifically:
- A new area called "Pacific Islands" has been added to cover in detail that region of the world
- The area called "South America" has been amended, so it accurately covers the whole South American sub-continent.
- The area called "Tropics" has been amended to be centred over the International Date Line (meridian 180º)
All these changes have been introduced starting from June 2020, and previously produced plots haven't been affected by them.
15/May/2020
- The issue affecting availability of NCEP CFSv2 members in the high-frequency (daily/subdaily) datasets reported as "known issue" E7 (C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues) has been now fixed and all NCEP CFSv2 members are now available for users to retrieve.
12/ May/2020
- As it happens every year, label "system" for the UK Met Office contribution to C3S seasonal forecast activity has been updated to a new value (system=15) starting from May 2020 real-time forecasts
- Please note that due to the production of hindcasts "on-the-fly", the CDS keyword 'system' does not have the same meaning as for the other contributors. Instead, it is just an indexing label that gets changed once per year.
- More info in the "Summary of available data" and in the "Seasonal forecasts and the Copernicus Climate Change Service" pages
25/March/2020
- An error in the retrieval of high-frequency data (daily/subdaily) from NCEP seasonal forecast data (NCEP CFSv2) data has been detected. This has been documented as "known issue" E7 (C3S Seasonal Forecast known issues)
It affects all data available in the high-frequency (daily/subdaily) datasets:
Seasonal forecast daily data on single levels (seasonal-original-single-levels)
- Seasonal forecast daily data on pressure levels (seasonal-original-pressure-levels)
Members with start time at 06h,12h and 18h are not being retrieved from the archive by the CDS and just members with start time at 00h are returned.
11/February/2020
- An error in the processing of surface solar radiation variables for NCEP has been reported (Known issue E6 in the "not fixed issues" section here)
- The parameters "surface net solar radiation" and "surface solar radiation downwards" (and their counterparts in the monthly statistics and anomalies datasets) have been accidentally swapped with each other in the case of
- Forecasts with nominal start dates from October 2019 to February 2020 (both included)
- Hindcasts with nominal start dates October, November, December, January and February
- A fix has been already introduced in the operational production of C3S data; starting from nominal start date March 2020 real-time forecast data (and its corresponding hindcasts) will not be affected by this.
- A recovery process for the affected data already published will be put in place. Details about when this will become available will be announced here.
- The parameters "surface net solar radiation" and "surface solar radiation downwards" (and their counterparts in the monthly statistics and anomalies datasets) have been accidentally swapped with each other in the case of
8/January/2020
- The recovery process for missing monthly and anomalies data for NCEP contribution has been now finished. More details in known issues E4.a1 and E4.a2 ("fixed issues" section here).
13/December/2019
- With the release of December 2019 C3S seasonal forecasts a new encoding for monthly data has been implemented allowing users to get the real initialization date of each individual ensemble member from lagged start forecasting systems.
More information here.
Related information about known issues here (items E4.a1 and E4.a2)
2/December/2019
- A data issue has been recently reported affecting CMCC contribution data for start dates between March and September. The impact of those errors is quite limited in general, but it can be noticeable for "geopotential height" variable in pressure levels.
More details can be found in known issues E5a and E5b here.
29/November/2019
- The recovery process for wrong snowfall data from CMCC contribution has been now finished. More details in known issues E3a, E3b, E3c and E3d ("fixed issues" section here)
7/November/2019
- The recovery process for the wrong snowfall data from CMCC contribution has started for the November start date hindcasts (i.e. 1993 to 2016). More details can be found in known issues E3.a ("not fixed errors" section here)
11/October/2019
- All the relevant documentation for the new forecasting systems to be released with October 2019 real-time forecasts (Météo-France System7 and NCEP CFSv2) is now available.
- Due to technical reasons, the publication of monthly mean data for NCEP has been delayed, but the full set of high-frequency data will be available as expected in the CDS. This has been recorded as known issue E4 (see details here in the "not fixed errors" section)
- As a side effect, publication of updated MetOffice hindcasts for November nominal start date (system=14) is also delayed.
- The current estimate is that all the above-mentioned delayed data would be made available on the week commencing on 4th November.
22/August/2019
- An upgrade to Météo-France contribution (change of operational forecasting system from System 6 to System 7) will be introduced from October 2019 nominal start date. Documentation for the new system here.
- A new data stream will be added to the C3S seasonal forecast multi-system in October 2019. This data comes from NCEP's Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2). Documentation for this system here.
5/April/2019
- An upgrade to MetOffice contribution (change of forecasting system version to GloSea5-GC2-LI) has been introduced from May 2019 nominal start date.
This document has been produced in the context of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
The activities leading to these results have been contracted by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, operator of C3S on behalf of the European Union (Delegation agreement signed on 11/11/2014). All information in this document is provided "as is" and no guarantee or warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose.
The users thereof use the information at their sole risk and liability. For the avoidance of all doubt, the European Commission and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts have no liability in respect of this document, which is merely representing the author's view.