One million feet view of Level-2 Processing Facility managed at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Title: One million feet view of Level-2 Processing Facility managed at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Authors: Rakesh Prithiviraj, Ioannis Mallas, Cristiano Zanna 

Affiliation of authors: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Abstract text
Launched in August 2018, European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite mission measures Earth's wind profile from space. The Aeolus ground segment mainly comprises of:
• Flight Operations Segment (FOS) to monitor and control Aeolus satellite and the instrument onboard, 
• Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) for the acquisition and systematic generation of Level-1A and Level-1B products and 
• Level-2 Processing Facility (L2PF) at ECMWF for the generation and dissemination of Level-2B and Level-2C products. 

ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing global numerical weather predictions and other data for our Member and Co-operating States and the broader community. ECMWF relies on its atmospheric model and data assimilation system which is called the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) to make weather predictions. ECMWF has one of the largest supercomputer facilities and meteorological data archives in the world.

This talk focusses on the Aeolus L2PF facility at ECMWF providing an overview of the processing infrastructure, relevant dataflows, monitoring system and presents the technical/system perspective of Aeolus L2PF in the context of weather forecast. The L2PF facility receives L1B data from Aeolus PDGS and systematically generates and disseminates L2B products and L2C products. The centre is also responsible for the generation of meteorological auxiliary data which is one of the critical inputs for the L2B generation.  The talk also shows various components at ECMWF that work together to achieve more than 99% L2B completeness. The components include ECMWF Production Data Store (ECPDS), ECMWF's High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) and L2PF cluster. 

The talk concludes with references to tests carried out at ECMWF that have demonstrated that new wind profile observations from Aeolus satellite significantly improve weather forecasts, particularly in the southern hemisphere and the tropics. Because the positive impact of Aeolus on the weather predictions, Aeolus data is expected to be part of the operational weather forecast system at ECMWF in January 2020.