The 8th WMO Workshop on the Impact of Various Observing Systems on Numerical Weather Prediction and Earth System Prediction will be hosted by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), at their headquarters in Norrköping, Sweden, from 27 to 30 May 2024. The workshop will be held in a hybrid mode, thus also enabling online participation.
Background
WMO’s Impact Workshop series is an important quadrennial venue for providing science evidence on the impacts of surface- and space-based observing systems, on short- to medium- and longer-range forecasting including climate monitoring. Conclusions from the Workshop provide guidance on how to optimize the use of the current global observing system as well as help guide its future evolution.
This workshop is held under the auspices of INFCOM/SC-ON Joint Expert Team on Earth Observing System Design and Evolution (JET-EOSDE).
The previous seven workshops in this series took place successively in Geneva (April 1997), Toulouse (March 2000), Alpbach (March 2004), Geneva (May 2008), Sedona (May 2012), Shanghai (May 2016) and most recently in a virtual format, in December 2020. Results from a multitude of observing system experiments, with both global and regional aspects, were presented each time and conclusions were drawn concerning the contributions of the various components of the observing systems to forecast skill at short and medium range.
Since then, both the global observing systems and the NWP systems that utilize it have undergone significant changes. Many space missions have been launched and ground observation systems networks have been enhanced. NWP systems are being coupled with models and data assimilation systems for the ocean, land, cryosphere and atmospheric composition, in pursuit of a whole Earth- system prediction capability. There has also been a continued trend toward using techniques other than Observing System Experiments (OSEs) and Observing System Simulations Experiments (OSSEs) to document data impact, such as Adjoint‐ and Ensemble‐based Forecast Sensitivity Observation Impact (FSOI and EFSOI) and other quantitative assessment techniques, and estimates of analysis uncertainty.
As a result, in this upcoming 8th Workshop, we will continue to focus on assessing the impacts of various observing systems in all Earth system domains on NWP, but we will extend the scope to also encompass the impact assessment of the various observing systems, to other Earth system applications. This is done in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the value of the observations and to support the strategic goals of WMO.
Cover image by David Becker.
