OpenIFS 48r1 is based on the ECMWF operational IFS cycle 48r1 which has been the ECMWF operational model since June 27th 2023 (see Model upgrade increases skill and unifies medium-range resolutions)
OpenIFS 48r1 is a significant scientific and technical upgrade from the previous OpenIFS 43r3v2 model release and includes, amongst other things, a moist physics upgrade, incorporation of multi-layer snow scheme, inclusion of operational CAMS chemistry and many more updates to the model physics parametrizations. Technical upgrades includes a new build system (move from FCM to ecbuild/cmake), major restructure of the code, inclusion of the single column model (SCM) and inclusion of ifs-test
Anyone wishing to use OpenIFS must have a OpenIFS license (see the list of Licensed Institutes).
It is important to note that OpenIFS 48r1 will not produce the same results as the previous releases based on 43r3.
Please report any issues or problems with this release to either the OpenIFS User Forums or openifs-support@ecmwf.int.
OpenIFS 48r1 is scientifically identical to the forecast model of IFS 48r1. For a full description of the IFS 48r1 operational model, please see IFS documentation, noting that Part I and II and any sections on Observations and Data Assimilation are not applicable to OpenIFS.
Details about changes to the operational IFS from cycle to cycle can be found on
Below is a summary of the scientific changes from IFS 43r3 to 48r1, which are relevant to OpenIFS.
45r1 – Cloud microphysics, soil physics
Improved numerics for warm-rain cloud microphysics and vertical extrapolation for semi-lagrangian trajectory;
Increased methane oxidation rate to improve (increase) water vapour in the stratosphere;
Improved representation of super-cooled liquid water in convection, and minor convection updates;
Correction of soil thermal conductivity formulation and addition of soil ice dependency;
Modified parameter for non-orographic gravity-wave drag scheme for 91 levels.
46r1 – Radiation and aerosol, convection
Improvements in convection scheme (entrainment, CAPE closure, shallow convection);
Activate LW scattering in radiation scheme;
3D aerosol climatology replaces 2D climatology;
47r1 – Albedo, ocean waves drag, quintic interpolation
Surface albedo changes including: 1) the use of six climatological fields from MODIS, 2) a better handling of the spectrum from the MODIS datasets;
Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and Green House Gases (GHG) timeseries are updated with more recent ones from CMIP6;
Quintic interpolation in the vertical for semi-Lagrangian advection;
The drag coefficient over the oceans is reduced for strong winds to account for observational evidences whereby the drag coefficient reduces sharply for high winds;
Stability corrections to the mid-level and deep convective closures (neutral) and reduced bounds for parcel perturbations.
47r3 – Moist physics upgrade
A more consistent formulation of boundary layer turbulence, shallow convection and sub-grid cloud including:
Simplified and more consistent treatment of sub-grid cloud saturation adjustment,
Consistent treatment of subgrid cloud from boundary layer turbulent mixing without separate statistical cloud scheme,
Consistent computation of mixing height for unstable turbulent boundary layer and convection scheme,
Change from double to single iteration of turbulent mixing scheme;
New method for computing inversion strength based on moist entropy for distinguishing stratocumulus and cumulus cloud;
Limit to convective overshoot based on tropopause stability;
New parametrized deep convection closure with an additional dependence on total advective moisture convergence;
Change from exponential-exponential cloud vertical overlap to random-exponential overlap in closer agreement with observations;
Include vapour deposition process for growth of falling snow particles;
Change from linear to cubic interpolation for cloud liquid, ice, rain and snow semi-Lagrangian departure point calculations, including 3D quasi-monotone limiter;
Interpolation of cloud and precipitation to radiation grid changed from in-cloud to grid-mean;
Inclusion of full supersaturation adjustment in the ensemble SPPT stochastic perturbations;
Mass-weighting and relaxation timescale introduced for ensemble SPPT stochastic perturbations;
Bug fix for vertical interpolation of 3D aerosol climatology;
Improved calculation of extinction coefficients for near-surface visibility in fog, rain and snow;
Revised gustiness parametrization;
48r1 – Multi-layer snow, climate fields, water and energy conservation, interactive ozone, freezing drizzle
Multi-layer snow scheme;
Revised climate fields – improved orographic fields for atmospheric drag;
Improved water and energy conservation (dynamics and physics);
Radiatively interactive prognostic ozone using new Hybrid-Linear Ozone (HLO) scheme;
New precipitation category - freezing drizzle and revised microphysical processes;
Revised computation of Semi-Lagrangian advection departure points;
New model top sponge layer formulation and semi-Lagrangian vertical filter;
Revised SPPT, removed cloud saturation adjustment from tendency perturbations.
There have been a significant number of changes to the model namelists and initial data format compared to OpenIFS 43r3. It is recommended that users do not attempt to use OpenIFS 43r3 namelists with OpenIFS 48r1 but should obtain new experiment data and matching namelists suitable for model cycle 48r1.
The recommended way to obtain initial experiment data for forecast experiments with OpenIFS is to use the OpenIFS Data Hub. For any data requests that are currently not served by the Data Hub please contact OpenIFS support by emailing openifs-support@ecmwf.int.