The following
---------- page under construction
...
is a description of the latest operational release of EFAS
...
v5.
...
...
v5.
...
1 introduces several minor changes to the system,
...
- Reporting Points update:
- 20-year return period points have been added (purple points)
- The dynamic reporting points algorithm has been completely rewritten following the discussions with DISS and the JRC. The new algorithm has clear goals and is simpler and well understood.
- Reporting points thresholds have been updated to be more coherent and in line with the notification rules
- A new Probability persistence layer has been added, allowing users to better understand how reporting points are created
- Minor changes in the overview table in the reporting points pop-up window
- ERIC Change (Calum to add)
Improvements to the EFAS entries on the Climate Data Store (CDS):
It is now possible to subset the geographical area when downloading EFAS data, by providing a set of coordinates within the EFAS domain. This allows users to request data only for their area of interest, and consequently reduce the file sizes downloaded.
The following variables are now available for download on the EFAS entries in netCDF format: upstream area, elevation, soil depth, wilting point and field capacity. Users can select the version of these variables appropriate for the version of EFAS forecasts they are accessing.
- Calibration of post-processing station models performed for all stations fulfilling requirements. An additional 398 stations are now post-processed.
- New EFAS web layers:
- New Layers:
- ERIC Notification Points
- Flood probability persistence
- Social Media Activity Analysis - The layer aggregates signals about floods in a specific area from Social Media (Twitter API streaming).
- New Features:
- EFAS Informal feedback collection
- Sharing to Social Media from Dashboard - adds a new "Share" button on each dashboard widget, which allows sharing what is currently visible in the widget to social media
- New Layers:
- Significant updates to our CEMS-Flood documentation; introducing our new ‘CEMS-Flood Service User Guide’, which includes information on data access, data catalog/structure/formats, guides on how to work with CEMS-Floods data, and more. Please note the new web address of the EFAS and GloFAS wikis has changed to: https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/CEMS/CEMS-Flood
Technical details
...
2022-03-23 12UTC
...
EFAS internal release
...
including:
- A new "Release News" pop-up that shows up on EFAS-IS when a new version of EFAS (minor and major) is released, including information on the release highlights and a link to the wiki for further information.
- Notification Feedback improvements, allowing EFAS partners to edit feedback they have submitted previously, allowing to specify the region for which the feedback was given (if the notification spans multiple), and a system for automatic notification reminders that will be rolled out shortly after the release day. See 4.4 How to provide feedback for details.
- Updates to EFAS Hydrological post-processing
- new calibration of all viable stations including 270 new stations (250 stations at 6-hourly and 20 stations at daily). Results are in EFAS v5.1 - Hydrological Post-Processing Calibration Evaluation page.
- updates to post-processed hydrographs based on feedback from the 18th EFAS Annual Meeting. See EFAS Reporting Points for an example.
- Increased offering of monitoring and forecast variables for EFAS made available through the Climate Data Store. See Model Output page for details.
- Runoff Water Equivalent (surface plus subsurface)
- Soil Wetness Index (root zone)
- Withdrawal of 'Volumetric Soil Moisture Content' variable from CDS (from EFAS v5.1 release onwards, 2024-03-20).
The data is available for the reanalysis (from 1992-01-01 to near real-time), the medium range forecasts (from EFAS v5.1 onwards), and the seasonal forecasts (from April 2024).The soil wetness index (root zone) and runoff water equivalent (surface plus subsurface) variables added with EFAS v5.1 on 2024-03-21 will only be available 30 days after the forecast date.
- EFAS flood thresholds
- EFAS flood threshold made available on wiki at Auxiliary Data page.
- Bug fixes to flood threshold calculation
- New stations added to Reporting Points layer on EFAS-IS. EFAS-IS is now showing 3617 fixed reporting points (river gauges) for which the model drainage area is larger than 50 km2. This is an increase of 278 fixed reporting points compared to previous EFAS version.
- Revised ERIC Reporting Points
- The minimum upstream area for plotting a reporting point has been increased to 150 km2 (up from 50 km2 previously). This reduces the number of reporting points that are plotted.
Retirement of ERICHA products
ERICHA Flash Flood products will be phased out in favour of the improved TAMIR products which include radar-nwp blended precipitation, ensemble-based hourly forecasts and flood impact products. More details can be found in TAMIR flash flood nowcasting wiki page.
This upgrade of EFAS has no impact on the EFAS modelling results.
Technical details
| Release date | 2024-03-21 |
|---|---|
| In test suite | 2024-03-07 |
EFAS internal number | 20 |
| Archiving of data | ECFS, MARS, |
...
CDS | |
| Reference climatology (for thresholds/ anomalies) | 1992 |
|---|
...
| -01-01 to 2022-12- |
...
| 31 | |
| EFAS Historical | 1992-01-01 to near present |
|---|---|
| Reforecasts | tbc |
| Horizontal projection |
...
| EPSG4326 |
| Horizontal resolution |
|---|
...
| 0.01667 x 0.01667° | |
| Temporal resolution | 6 |
|---|
...
| - |
...
| hourly |
...