Many activities and developments in 2022 improved the quality, usefulness and accessibility of our products and services, helping national meteorological and hydrological services in our Member and Co-operating States to produce weather forecasts and early warnings of severe weather.
The positive impact of our 2021 forecasting system upgrade to Cycle 47r3 became evident in 2022.
The positive impact of our 2021 forecasting system upgrade to Cycle 47r3 became evident in 2022. Extreme weather events, such as Storm Eunice and the European summer heatwave, were well predicted, and environmental consequences such as wildfires and poor air quality were monitored by the EU Copernicus services we run or contribute to.
Open data continued to grow, and with new products and additional Copernicus datasets available in 2022, users had greater access to high-quality Earth system data. In response to the crisis in Ukraine, we worked with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and partners in the South-East European Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory System (SEE-MHEWS-A) project to provide numerical weather prediction products to the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Centre and an EU programme that strengthens disaster risk reduction and crisis management in the region.
The positive impact of our 2021 forecasting system upgrade to Cycle 47r3 became evident in 2022.
Throughout the year, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) monitored global atmospheric composition and European regional air quality such as pollen levels in the atmosphere, emissions from global wildfires, episodes of Saharan dust, and other sources of pollution to provide consistent, quality-controlled information to support decision- and policy-making. Its monitoring of the 2022 Antarctic ozone hole showed that it closed later than most of those of the previous 40 years and was the third unusual ozone hole season in a row.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) generated a wide range of authoritative, open-access information and datasets, such as ERA5-LandT, with its reduced latency for those that need land data in close to real time, to support climate change adaptation strategies and planning. Interest continued to grow in products such as the C3S monthly climate bulletins and the Service’s flagship publication, the European State of the Climate (ESOTC).
For the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), we were selected to continue providing fire forecast data for the period 2022–2027, in collaboration with Météo-France. We worked on improving the hydrological representation of the European and Global Flood Awareness Systems (EFAS and GloFAS) and we contributed to an upgraded reanalysis dataset offering daily river discharge simulations for every river across the world from 1980 onwards.
The middle of February 2022 was very cyclonic over north-western Europe, with three named storms affecting the area in one week. Cyclone Eunice (also known as Nora and Zeynep) was one of those and it delivered major wind-related impacts in many countries on 18 and 19 February.
Storm Eunice
Satellite image of Storm Eunice on 18 February 2022 from EUMETSAT’s Meteosat-11 satellite.
The forecast from 12 February had high Extreme Forecast Index (EFI) values over northern Europe six days ahead, showing the potential for widespread impacts.
Eunice brought very strong wind gusts of more than 30 m/s quite widely over southern England on 18 February. More than a week before the event, the ensemble system predicted a risk for windier-than-normal conditions at Heathrow.
In this case, high-resolution forecast gusts were generally a few m/s stronger than observation reports over southern England.
A closer look at the statistics of the wind gusts during the stormy period (12–20 February) shows that overall there was good correspondence between forecast and observations over Europe.
Whilst the gust forecast bias is generally small, in individual cases errors of different sign may occur. For example, the overprediction for Eunice contrasts with an underprediction for storm Franklin, which arrived a few days later, on 21 February. It is worth noting that the accuracy of synoptic pattern forecasts will play a major role in wind gust prediction errors.
Extreme Forecast Index (EFI)
EFI (shading) and Shift-of-Tail (SOT – blue contour encloses positive values) forecast for 10 m wind gusts from 12 February valid on 18 February. The location of London Heathrow Airport is indicated by an hourglass symbol.
During the summer of 2022, Europe experienced several heatwaves, and much drier conditions than normal, especially in western Europe. A record high temperature of 40.3°C was reached in the UK, exceeding the previous record by 1.5°C. Temperatures also exceeded 40°C in France, 45°C in Spain and 46°C in Portugal.
The figure shows average weekly temperature anomalies for 6 June to 28 August from the ERA5 reanalysis, and for all ensemble mean forecasts that verified during that period, with different lead times. The strong anomaly over western Europe is evident in ERA5 as well as in the week-2 forecasts. In the week-6 forecasts, the warm anomaly over western Europe is still present, but it is weaker.
On a two-week timescale, the forecast started to distinguish between the extreme weeks and the more normal weeks. Forecasts failed to capture the full magnitude of the extreme event of the record-breaking day over the UK. Similar conclusions were found for other recent heatwaves.
CAMS forecast very high levels of surface ozone pollution across a large region of Europe as temperatures soared. Fire danger forecasts from ECMWF, available through CEMS, repeatedly warned of increased fire danger due to the lack of rain and the resulting dry vegetation, combined with high temperatures.
Summer heatwave 2 m temperature anomalies
Mean weekly 2 m temperature for the weeks commencing 6 June to 28 August 2022 from the ERA5 reanalysis (top), the ensemble mean from week-2 forecasts (middle), and the ensemble mean from week-6 forecasts (bottom).
Emissions from wildfires are a significant source of atmospheric pollutants. 2022 saw increased wildfire activity in some regions around the world, with associated rises in emissions.
The CAMS Weather Room routinely monitors wildfire emissions, providing up-to-date information on the location, intensity and estimated emissions of wildfires around the world through its Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), as well as monitoring smoke transport and atmospheric composition/air quality impacts. CAMS forecasts are widely used in air quality apps, to help people limit their exposure to pollution, and by policy-makers and local authorities to manage and mitigate the air quality impact of fires.
In general, CAMS GFAS data for 2022 showed the continuing downward trend in global wildfires and vegetation fires over the last two decades, although several regions, particularly in parts of Europe and South America, saw the highest estimated emissions during their peak wildfire seasons. France and Spain were two of the worst-affected European countries, with emissions at their highest level since at least 2003.
This had a major impact on atmospheric composition and air quality in the region. For example, smoke plumes from the large blazes in south-western France and northern Portugal during August’s heatwave were clearly reflected in the daily maximum mixing ratio of carbon monoxide at 850 hPa for 12 August 2022.
GFAS is based on satellite observations of active fires and fire radiative power (FRP), a measure of fire intensity, to estimate emissions of carbon and a wide range of other air pollutants that constitute smoke, and it provides a dataset from 2003 to present. GFAS emissions are used by CAMS global and regional (Europe) forecasting systems to predict the resulting smoke transport and impact on air quality.
Impact of wildfire emissions on air quality
CAMS global forecast of daily maximum carbon monoxide mixing ratio at 850 hPa for 12 August 2022.
We maintain a range of verification statistics to evaluate the accuracy of our forecasts. The headline scores are computed as 12-month running averages to filter out the annual cycle and better identify trends in forecast performance. This means the beneficial effect of new model cycles is fully visible only 12 months after implementation.
The implementation of Cycle 47r3, which included a major upgrade of the moist physics of the model together with several other changes, on 12 October 2021 further increased medium-range forecast skill. The evolution of upper-air ensemble forecast (ENS) skill relative to ERA5 is shown in the figure in the Foreword.
Compared to forecasts from other global centres, ECMWF has been able to maintain the overall lead for upper-air parameters in the medium range. The number of large two-metre temperature errors in ensemble forecasts (ENS) has been further reduced, according to one of our headline scores.
Improvements were observed for surface parameters, with Extreme Forecast Index (EFI) scores for 2 m temperature and 10 m wind speed reaching new high points in 2022. Cycle 47r3 also improved forecasts of ocean wave peak period, putting ECMWF ahead of other global centres.
Early in 2022, ECMWF’s seasonal forecast predicted a gradual return from La Niña towards more neutral conditions within a few months, but in the observations La Niña conditions persisted throughout the year. Later in 2022, the forecast got closer to observations and shifted the return to neutral into early 2023. In the extratropics, a strong signal for a warm anomaly in the summer of 2022 in Europe was present in the forecast but its magnitude towards Scandinavia and Siberia was underestimated.
Ensemble forecast headline score improvements
Fraction of large 2 m temperature errors in ensemble forecasts (defined as having a Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS) exceeding 5 Kelvin) in the extratropics. Shown are 12-month running average values.
By the end of the year, we were producing approximately 700 GB of open data each day.
Our move towards making more data openly accessible is key to increasing the impact of our products and activities in Member States and beyond.
In January we released a new free and open dataset called ‘ECMWF Open Data (real-time)’. Users could access the data through ECMWF channels as well as via Microsoft Azure. The data are based on a range of high-resolution forecasts (9 km horizontal resolution) and ensemble forecasts (18 km horizontal resolution) at a resolution of 0.4 x 0.4 degrees.
By the end of the year, we were producing approximately 700 GB of open data each day.
We worked on making the data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR), by developing an Application Programming Interface (API) so they are easy to download, and by developing open-source Python libraries to process and visualise them. To present the new tools and help users understand how to retrieve and process our data, we created a set of Jupyter notebooks, each reproducing a workflow for one open weather forecast chart from downloading the data to visualisation.
By the end of the year, we were producing approximately 700 GB of open data each day. User uptake has been positive: daily requests rose from 38,000 in 2021 to 860,000 in 2022, and the data provided daily increased from approximately 2.8 TB in 2021 to 7.5 TB in 2022. Microsoft Azure reported 400,000 user retrievals in one week and the delivery of 7.5 TB of data.
These steps to provide more open data were accompanied by other measures to facilitate access to ECMWF products. These included licence changes and a gradual reduction in fees for chargeable data, and updated documentation for our open forecast charts.
Data retrieved from the ECMWF open data portal
Approximately 1,700 TB of data was downloaded from the ECMWF open data portal in 2022, corresponding to about 140 TB per month.
A further segment of the ERA5 global atmospheric reanalysis was released, extending the archive to include data from 1959 to 1978. The production of an additional extension to 1940 was completed in October 2022, to be released in 2023, after which the total ERA5 archive will cover over 80 years.
These important historical data help us to build a globally complete picture of the climate over the past decades, using the past to learn more about the present climate and to measure change over time. The data are updated daily with a time lag of just five days and they are available from C3S.
The ERA5 dataset creates ‘maps without gaps’ by filling in where information is lacking – for example at times when clouds prevent satellites from observing Earth’s surface, or in places like the Arctic that are difficult to access with ground-based instruments. Covering temperature, surface pressure, wind, ocean wave height and more, the data are in demand and, as of December, ERA5 had over 100,000 users worldwide.
The further extensions to 1959 (published in 2022) and 1940 (production completed in 2022) replace a preliminary extension back to 1950 that was characterised by sub-optimal tropical cyclone properties.
In our role as the hydrological forecast computing centre for the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, we worked with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission to produce a substantially upgraded hydrological reanalysis dataset of the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS).
The high-resolution global hydrological reanalysis dataset GloFAS-ERA5 (version 4) was launched publicly in November and made available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store, offering daily river discharge simulations for every river across the world from 1980 onwards. Other variables, such as soil moisture and snow water equivalent, will become available during 2023.
The reanalysis includes daily maps of discharge over the globe at a resolution of 0.05 degrees (about 5 km) – the previous version used a 0.1 degree grid (about 10 km). It helps the study of flood events and droughts globally during a much longer time frame than the period during which GloFAS has been operational.
The dataset is updated in near-real time, with a delay of about three days, to include the latest available forcing data. Generating such a high-resolution reanalysis is made possible by our new Atos high-performance computing facility, combined with work by ECMWF and the JRC on the parallelisation of routines in the hydrological model LISFLOOD. The LISFLOOD model determines to what extent water that comes down as rain evaporates, is absorbed by the soil and plants, or runs off into rivers.
Many places have no data on river discharge, meaning a country may for example have no way of knowing how much water is going to be discharged into it from rivers outside its borders. Global simulations thus close an information gap.
High-resolution reanalysis
Representation of rivers in Scandinavia in GloFAS v3.1 (left) and in the updated version, GloFAS v4.0 (right).
The European State of the Climate 2021 (ESOTC) report was published by C3S with contributions from national meteorological services, partners and other Copernicus services. It included an overview of the previous year’s climate in a global context, a more comprehensive report of conditions in Europe, and a focus on the Arctic.
The report highlighted that, globally, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continued to increase. Levels of carbon dioxide were higher in 2021 than at any time in at least two million years. The last seven years were the warmest on record, contributing to continued loss of ice mass from glaciers and ice sheets, which in turn has an impact on sea level rise.
The report provides consistent, dependable data that policy-makers can use to understand climate change and its impacts, and its findings were widely covered by media around the world.
Also in 2022, through C3S the first State of the Climate in Europe report was co-authored and launched with the WMO, with extensive media coverage.
European State of the Climate 2021
The flagship publication from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) included a comprehensive report of conditions in Europe. Visit the Copernicus Climate Change Service website for the full European State of the Climate 2021 report.
At COP27, lead scientists from CAMS and C3S discussed the Copernicus contribution to the CO2 Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity (CO2MVS).
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, was held in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. It brought together policy-makers from around the world to reaffirm their commitment to the goals of the Paris Agreement and to accelerate global climate action through emissions reduction, scaled-up adaptation efforts and enhanced flows of appropriate finance.
ECMWF was well represented, speaking at high-level events on the WMO Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF) and the EU Destination Earth initiative.
The SOFF financing mechanism was launched at COP27 to help address the long-standing problem of missing weather and climate observations from Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. It aims to help the most vulnerable countries to predict and adapt to extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves.
Our Director-General and Director of Forecasts highlighted ECMWF’s support for the renewed funding efforts for SOFF, emphasising the importance of closing the basic weather and climate data gaps in developing countries.
At COP27, lead scientists from CAMS and C3S discussed the Copernicus contribution to the CO2 Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity (CO2MVS).
The Copernicus services run by ECMWF organised an active programme of events highlighting the wealth of Earth observation data provided by CAMS and C3S and real-life applications of the models and data. Lead scientists from CAMS and C3S discussed the Copernicus contribution to the CO2 Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity (CO2MVS) and collaboration between the services and the Union for the Mediterranean, with a focus on health and cultural heritage preservation.
Cooperation with the European Investment Bank (EIB) was highlighted, showing how Copernicus data could support investment in climate adaptation, particularly in Africa.
On the Earth Information Day, both CAMS and C3S had the opportunity to address parties directly, giving updates on progress and how the Copernicus services support climate change adaptation efforts.
COP27 World Bank ministerial event
Left to right: Petteri Taalas (WMO), Nirivololona Raholijao (Madagascar Bureau of Climate and Meteorology), Florian Pappenberger (ECMWF Director of Forecasts) and Alexia Latortue (United States Department of the Treasury) at a session co-hosted by the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action and the WMO.
Two pilot projects to further enhance collaboration with our Member and Co-operating States were selected to begin in 2023. They will tackle topics of importance to ECMWF and our community: adaptation to future technologies, and Internet of Things (IoT) observations for numerical weather prediction.
Our Fellowship programme strengthens links with the scientific community to advance research on specific topics of common interest.
In 2022, we worked with 11 ECMWF Fellows, from France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA, on areas including ensemble post-processing; atmospheric momentum transport; warm conveyor belts; heatwave prediction and predictability; and the RTTOV radiative transfer model.
Heini Wernli (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) completed his second Fellowship term in February 2022. Research with Heini and his group contributed greatly to our understanding of warm conveyor belts.
Operating from multiple sites brought opportunities to forge closer partnerships with NMHSs and academic institutions in the regions.
With the German national meteorological service DWD, we developed early career fellowship and visiting scientist programmes for the Bonn site. Four early career fellowships were awarded to start in 2023 for projects related to Arctic clouds, altimeter measurements, water cycles and atmospheric composition.
With the Italian Government, we signed an agreement as part of the Copernicus Mirror Programme to help institutions and public bodies access relevant Copernicus information and tools. More widely, contracts with Denmark, France, Germany and Italy were concluded under the new CAMS National Collaboration Programme, a scheme designed to support uptake of CAMS products by public authorities in Europe.
Whilst 2022 saw many events return to in-person attendance, we built on experiences gained during the COVID pandemic to provide a virtual experience as well, to share knowledge with Member States and the wider scientific community while reducing the carbon impact.
The year began with over 160 experts from fields such as radio astronomy, meteorology, Earth remote sensing and spectrum management meeting virtually to discuss radio frequency interference (RFI). The radio spectrum is used to support many critical services, and the workshop discussed 5G, how RFI is being monitored, the importance of the radio spectrum in numerical weather prediction, and how best to influence the regulatory process.
We were selected to host the European hub for the 7th SPARC General Assembly, which reviewed research into atmospheric variability and prediction. SPARC is a World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) programme, coordinating international research efforts that apply knowledge of the atmosphere to understand climate variability and prediction. The two other hubs were in the USA and China. The multi-hub format was chosen to reduce the carbon footprint of the meeting, which was also held virtually, enabling engagement between communities across the world.
Multi-hub for a lower carbon footprint
ECMWF in Reading was the European hub for the SPARC General Assembly, linking with two other hubs for the Americas and Asia.
The third ESA-ECMWF Workshop on Machine Learning for Earth Observation and Prediction was also held in Reading, combining in-person and virtual attendance. Participants discussed the state of the art in this rapidly evolving field in areas such as machine learning for Earth observations and hybrid machine learning in data assimilation, among many other topics.
There were many opportunities through workshops and seminars to engage with Member States and share knowledge on key topics. These included a workshop on model uncertainty, our Using ECMWF Forecasts meeting and hackathon on the theme ‘visualising meteorological data’, the CAMS and C3S General Assemblies, and the 6th WGNE workshop on systematic errors in weather and climate models.
At our first in-person Annual Seminar in three years, over 100 scientists and students considered the large range of physical processes and scales that have to be represented in seamless weather prediction. The seminar was also followed daily by attendees on the livestream.
An extensive programme of courses was delivered to assist Member and Co-operating States in the training of scientists in numerical weather forecasting and in making use of ECMWF forecast products.
Visualising meteorological data
Interactive session at the Using ECMWF’s Forecasts meeting, UEF2022.