ECMWF Council at its 96th session in June 2020, agreed to make available Tropical Cyclone tracks (TC tracks) from the 06/18 UTC forecast cycles as WMO essential products.
While ECMWF is evaluating the impact of these tracks 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 in 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)
With the introduction of the TC tracks from the 06/18 UTC forecast cycles, 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 situations where only one member is present, as described in the table:
| BUFR Descriptor 001091 ecCodes key = ensembleMemberNumber | BUFR Descriptor 001092 ecCodes key = ensembleForecastType
|
---|
HRES | 52 | 0 |
---|
ENS control | 51 | 1 |
---|
ENS perturbed member | 1 - 50 | 255 (MISSING) |
---|
A MISSING value may be reported by the decoding software as 'null', "missing value" or 2147483647.
See WMO=33 code-flag table#CF_001092 (TYPE OF ENSEMBLE FORECAST).
Release Date
ECMWF will continue to test these products. Further notice will be provided for operational implementation.
Once in production, data via dissemination and graphical products will also be made available.
2 Comments
David Barbary
Hello,
Can you confirm that these BUFRs at 06 and 18UTC are still under test and are not operational like 00 and 12UTC?
Best regards
Carsten Maass
Hello,
Tropical Cyclone tracks at 6/18 UTC became operational with the Implementation of IFS Cycle 47r2.