Met Office Plans for Next-Generation Observation Pre-Processing and Data Assimilation

The Met Office is embarking on a major redesign of their weather and climate prediction capabilities, in preparation for new IT infrastructures, applications and observation sources expected to come online in the next decade and beyond. As part of the Next-Generation Modelling System (NGMS) Programme, evolving requirements for both observation processing system (OPS) and data assimilation (DA) capabilities have been reviewed and updated. Moving to community-based, open-source codes that encourage broader collaborations in OPS and DA whilst ensuring traditional operational metrics of performance and robustness are maintained has been a driving principle.

Met Office NGMS-OPS activities have focussed initially on reviewing the current observation processing system (OPS) in order clearly define the scientific and technical basis for the future system. In this process, attention has been given to common procedures and comparison of various observations types to gather information on how to better generalise and rationalise the code. The design of the future system can be thought of in terms of technologies or assimilation operators rather than observation types and should include the available ensemble information to improve observation quality control.

Met Office NGMS-DA activities have focussed on a) Assessing the suitability of a range of community-based DA systems for future operational use, and b) Preparing the current generation (OPS, VAR) systems as a ‘plan B’ in the event of delay to the delivery of the new system. For a), attention has focussed on the suitability of Joint Environment for Data assimilation Infrastructure (JEDI) to satisfy generic Met Office DA requirements, through the development of a prototype interface to the Met Office’s NGMS ‘LFRic’ software infrastructure.

This talk will provide an overview of Met Office OP and DA requirements for the NGMS era, an update on latest developments to interface JEDI to LFRic, and briefly lay out plans for further collaborative development in future.