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Gridded global Precipitation for Hydrology applications. 

A global gridded precipitation is a high-relevance high-priority development for a number of applications at ECMWF, particularly in 2026-2027, there are 5-key motivations:

  • ECMWF has a recognised global leadership in Weather + Atmospheric/Surface reanalysis (Rabier et al. 2025)
  • ECMWF global leadership in precipitation forecasting has stably fallen to a 3rd place (QED, 29 Septemberr 2026)
  • ECMWF precipitation is only a forecast field (unlike T2m having a dedicated 2D-analysis) and with large documented errors (Lavers et al. 2021)
  • ECWMF is investing in CONVX package, and full Hydrological Coupling (CaMa-Flood+), yet without a reliable verifying analysis for precipitation
  • ECMWF is largely investing in AI-driven forecasting (AIFS, aiLand, AIFL) missing a crucial precipitation high-quality field for training/forcing.

For all the reasons above a precipitation analysis project is timely and relevant and a proposal is drafted:

Proposed running period: Q4-2026 to Q4-2027

Proposed kick-off: 5 November 2026

Proposed international task-force: ECCC (CaPA team), MetNo (GridPP + Bris team), SMHI (Clim team), ECMWF (Hydro-Land-Physics team)

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