ECMWF's operational incremental 4D-Var assimilation system has an outer loop resolution of 40km (T511) By January 2002 the assimilation system will have an inner loop resolution of 80km (T255). The paper will present the status and future directions of a number of projects to improve the performance of the operational data assimilation system, including inter alia:

* Preparations for assimilation of new satellite data including ENVISAT Ozone data, AIRS data MSG data SeaWinds Data Microwave imager rain-rate data

* Improvements in the pre-conditioning of 4D-Var, and in the treatment of the trajectory

* Improvements in observational quality control

* Incorporation of more complete adjoints of the physical parametrization in the inner loops to permit assimilation of rain-rate data and to prepare the assimilation of cloud data.

* Reduced-rank Kalman filter to enable the cycling of the 4D-Var flow-dependent structure functions.

* Developments to cope with the forthcoming vast volume of satellite data.

Currently, the ECMWF Ensemble Prediction System generates a 50-member ensemble of T255 integrations once daily. The paper will present the current status on a number of projects to improve the ECMWF Ensemble prediction system, including inter alia:

* Tropical Cyclone Perturbations

* Humidity singular vectors

* Comparison of a twice-daily 50-member ensemble with a once-daily 100-member ensemble

The paper will discuss the results in the context of the development of a system for forecasting severe (i.e. high-impact) weather.