At its 96th session in June 2020, the Council agreed to make available Tropical Cyclone trajectories at 06 and 18 UTC as WMO essential products.
While ECMWF is evaluating the impact of these trajectories on the corresponding cycles, test data has been made available for download.
Access to test data
TC tracks test files are available for download in BUFR4 format from:
ftp://wmo:essential@dissemination.ecmwf.int/
Test data files are available on real time at the corresponding sub-directories:
test/YYYYMMDD060000
test/YYYYMMDD180000
Notice: The number of tracks identified in the 06/18 cycles is lower due to the shorter forecast range available in these cycles (up to step 90 for HRES and 144 for ENS)
Updates to the BUFR headers
With the introduction of the tropical cyclone tracks from the 06 and 18 UTC forecast, an inconsistency in the encoding of the BUFR headers has been corrected. The ensembleForecastType key (BUFR descriptor 001092) now contains the correct information for the different member forecasts (key ensembleMemberNumber, BUFR descriptor 001091), including in the situation where only one member is present, as described in the table:
A MISSING value may be reported by the decoding software as 'null', "missing value" or 2147483647.
See BUFR code table for element 001092 (TYPE OF ENSEMBLE FORECAST).
The updates to the BUFR headers will also be applied to the the 00 and 12 UTC tropical cyclone tracks once released in production.
Release Date
ECMWF will continue to test these products aiming to release in production with the next IFS cycle 47r2.
Once in production, data via dissemination and graphical products will also be made available.
The Tropical Cyclone tracks from the 06 and 18 UTC forecasts are released currently as test products only and are not yet supported operationally. Although ECMWF makes best efforts to ensure these products are routinely available in a timely manner they should not be relied on for operational use. Please report any problems you find with this data to the Servicedesk.