OPERA: Operational Programme for the Exchange of Weather Radar Information in Europe

The OPERA programme (Operational Programme for the Exchange of weather RAdar information) is the Weather Radar programme of Eumetnet, the Network of the European Meteorological Services. The objective of OPERA is to harmonise and improve the operational exchange of weather radar information between national meteorological services. To this aim OPERA has worked on the specification of the meteorological products to exchange, on their exchange format, as well as on the software to enable the data exchange. Moreover, recommendations on the radar systems as well as on the procedures to enhance the quality of the data have been produced. New projects have been established e.g. on the quality information, on the user needs, on an assessment of the benefit of dual polarization for operational radar use and on a study of potential file formats for the future data exchange. OPERA is also building a pilot weather radar data hub for European data. The paper presents a status report of the programme and preliminary results from the projects.

OPERA is a joint effort of 25 European national meteorological services and is managed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Further information on Eumetnet is found at http://www.eumetnet.eu.org and on OPERA at http://www.chmi.cz/OPERA.