Description of upgrade

The CAMS IFS cycle 46R1 is based on ECMWF's IFS cycle 46R1. IFS Cycle 46r1 is an upgrade with many scientific contributions, including changes in the use of observations and in modelling. The new cycle also includes an upgrade of the vertical resolution from 60 model levels to 137 model levels. 

The page will be updated as required. It was last changed on 11.04.2019.

For a record of changes made to this page please refer to  Document versions.

Further information and advice regarding the upgrade can be obtained from User Support.

Timetable for implementation

The planned timetable for the implementation of the cycle 46r1 is as follows:

The timetable represents current expectations and may change in light of actual progress made.

Current Status

IFS cycle 46r1 is going through its final testing phase.

Meteorological content of the new cycle

The meteorological changes can be found on the ECMWF IFS CY46R1 page.

Atmospheric composition content of the new cycle

Assimilation

• • No changes

Observations

• • Assimilation of PMAp aerosol optical depth (AOD) from METOP-A and METOP-B over land and ocean. The Polar Multi-Sensor Aerosol Product (PMAp) is a combined aerosol product based on measurements by the GOME-2, AVHRR and IASI instruments. PMAp data over land and PMAp data from METOP-B are introduced in this cycle. The impact of PMAp on the analysis and subsequent forecast is low, but at the same time important to increase resilience against potential failures of the two MODIS instruments.

Model

• • Updated optical properties for aerosol. This has a small impact on the optical depth of organic matter and of sea-salt: both are less extinctive per unit mass.

  • 
    

Impact of the new cycle

The new cycle is being validated by the CAMS Validation team and the results will be presented in a validation report. 

Technical details of the new cycle

Changes to GRIB encoding

Model identifiers

The GRIB model identifiers (generating process identification number) for cycle 43R3 will be changed as follows:

New model output parameters

There are no new parameters introduced with cycle 46r1.

Software

ecCodes

ecCodes version 2.12.0 provides full support for the new model output parameters introduced in IFS Cycle 46r1.

Availability of test data from the cycle 46r1 test suites

Test data is available from MARS, either through direct access or through WebAPI. The CAMS operational FTP server (ECPDS) also serves daily test data in the directory "/DATA/CAMS_GLOBAL_TEST" and "/DATA/CAMS_EUROPE_BC_TEST" for global and regional boundary condition data, respectively. More details can be found here.

Document versions