Around the release of our March forecast a few new features enhancing the service are being put in place, from changes in the publication date of the data and products, to the inclusion of new features in the web application displaying our graphical products, and including information about verification of the forecast systems. A new seasonal forecast dataset will be published in the CDS catalogue, as described below.

• Changes to publication dates: all graphical and data products are now published earlier than usual. Specifically:
  • 6th of the month at 12 UTC: ECMWF data will be available
  • 10th of the month at 12 UTC: the remaining forecast systems data and all graphical products will be available

• Change to the graphical products web page:
  • A new application using ECMWF's OpenCharts engine integrated in the C3S website will replace the current page from 1st March 2023 at 12UTC
  • WARNING: With this change the URL will be affected, and the URL for the new starting point through the graphical products will now be: http://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal/ 
  • The new interface introduces some useful features, among others:
    • Chartsets: allowing users to show side-by-side graphical products belonging to the same "chartset group" (gray bubbles above the plot thumbnail title).
    • Share: this allows users to obtain a widget to be embedded in a web page or to share a given plot over social networks.
    • Export: with the enhancements in this feature, on top of being able to export the plot and save it as an image (PNG/PDF), users will have access to an API allowing them to programatically access the plots of their choice.

• New contents in the graphical products:
  • Starting from the February 2022 real-time forecast, monthly plots will be now also available, in addition to the 3-month aggregations in the new web interface

• Enhanced documentation with information about verification:
  • Some verification metrics and scores for all current forecast systems, and the multi-system combination, will be made available as part of the C3S seasonal forecast documentation: 
    C3S seasonal forecasts verification plots
  • A Jupyter Notebook will be also soon released (date yet to be confirmed) allowing users to reproduce those plots and giving them a starting point to create similar ones for the variables of their interest.

• New CDS dataset with ocean variables:
  • A new dataset containing 1-month averages of 2-D fields for variables coming from the ocean component of the contributing forecast systems.
  • The dataset called "Seasonal forecast monthly averages of ocean variables" will be available here: http://cds.copernicus-climate.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/seasonal-monthly-ocean
  •  The dataset will be published with the update of the March real-time forecast at 12UTC on the 10th March 2023