This list describes the status of some requests put forward by users during the User Voice Corner feedback session at the ECMWF UEF meeting held in June 2017. Items are included here mainly to provide some useful clarification and/or an update where significant progress has already been made. Many more items are being worked on or considered for future action.


  • Model Climate (M-Climate): quantiles archived in MARS

These are now archived, indeed all quantiles 0,1,2,..100 are saved for all lead time ranges and all parameters for which we compute the EFI and SOT. See here for an example of how to retrieve. Users should ideally download this quantile data directly rather than downloading all the re-forecasts and computing quantiles locally. The latter approach imposes a very heavy load on MARS, which can slow down access for all users.

  • Additional parameters (7-day anomalies) and time periods for the Extended-range forecasts (also known as Monthly forecast) 

Weekly anomalies are now available in ecCharts for multiple 7-day periods up to day 45. In the ecCharts layers filter box type "extended" to see the options. New parameters are also now available.

  • Stratospheric levels from ENS and Extended range forecasts

The following stratospheric levels are available in MARS for both ENS and Extended Range forecasts: 100, 50, 10mb. Such levels are included in the Real-Time Catalogue for ENS while for the Extended range forecast the highest pressure level is 200 hPa. We are currently reviewing the Real-Time Catalogue for the Extended range forecasts with a view to adding more stratospheric levels.

  • Personalise settings in user's profile on www.ecmwf.int (default location for ENS meteograms)

The Dashboard facility should be used for this purpose (see here for help).

  • "Stepping back" on the new "Web Charts" interface

A new link has been provided to get back from chart display to thumbnail display. It is in the top left corner of the page (small arrow with the word "Charts").

  • Additional precipitation and wind speed thresholds for probability charts

ECMWF strategy has been to provide the user with the option to tailor their probability requirements within ecCharts. In the ecCharts layers filter box type "probability". Note that weighted and multi-parameter probabilities are also catered for here. Saving related products to the dashboard facilitates quick recall (see here)

  • Speed of ecCharts 

Work continues to improve the situation - hardware and software upgrades are imminent. Note also that local issues, which ECMWF has no control over, can complicate performance levels. It is probably unreasonable for users to expect to reach the same performance levels as on their own dedicated workstations, though as indicated we are constantly striving to speed up the service.

  • Clickable vertical soundings from the ENS

ECMWF is actively working on this addition to ecCharts, with a schedule for implementation of mid-2018, subject to technical hurdles being overcome.

  • Spaghetti plots

While plotting Spaghetti charts, users faced instances when the plots time out or are extremely slow. This issue has been fixed.

  • Precipitation type meteograms

These are now available in ecCharts for any site in the world (introduced in late Nov 2017). Also available is an ENS map product showing most probable precipitation type.

  • Updating a saved ecCharts product

Users can load up an existing product, modify it, "save as" with a different name, then delete the old product.

  • Resolution of disseminated HRES

Lat/lon datasets are available at 0.1 degrees. This decision was taken because of coding issues with some of the surface data in grib1 format. Users can get the original model data from MARS by defining the grid as O1280.