Description of the upgrade


Implemented: 01 December 2013  

Datasets affected


  • TC track
ECMWF's TC track products contain
  • time
  • position (latitude/longitude in degrees)
  • central pressure (hPa)
  • location and intensity of maximum wind speed (m/s) for each tropical cyclone identified and tracked in the forecast.
ECMWF's TC track are produced only for tropical cyclones where an observation report is present at the analysis time.

Resolution

Unchanged

HorizontalVertical


Horizontal (unchanged)
  • Atmospheric
    • HRES: T1279
    • ENS: Leg A T639, Leg B T319, Leg C T255
  • Wave
    • HRES: 0.25 degrees
    • ENS: 0.5 degrees



Vertical (unchanged)
  • Atmospheric
    • HRES: L137
    • ENS: L91


Technical content

  • The enhanced TC tracks are coded in BUFR-4 and replace the current BUFR-3 products
    • BUFR Section 1 changes:
      • edition number changes from 3 to 4;
      • length of section 1 changes from 18 bytes to 22 bytes.
    • Some steps are coded as missing values in the new product.
    • BUFR tables version 16 (files B0000000000000016000.TXT,D0000000000000016000.TXT and C0000000000000016000.TXT). are needed to successfully decode the new TC track products. Users that do not have these tables download the latest version of ECMWF's BUFRDC
  • The BUFR templates remain unchanged but missing value indicators are used to describe unavailable data entries
  • For compatibility reasons, TC track products archived in MARS will continue to be encoded in BUFR-3 but will include all enhancements described above.

Model ID and experiment number

  • Atmospheric: 130
  • Ocean wave: 116
  • Limited-area ocean wave: 216

E-suite experiment number = 0059

Resources

ECMWF Newsletter: See Newsletter No.130.

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Related links
All IFS cycles