Cloudburst: A Platform for Running Post-Processing Workflows at the Met Office

Cloudburst is a new post-processing system at the Met Office, leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide a route for easy deployment of post processing pipelines allowing for the generation of replacement data as legacy sources are retired. The focus is primarily on generating diagnostics where consistency across multiple variables is required to provide a coherent weather narrative. Thus far all provided parameters have utilised the Met Office’s global and UK deterministic models but the system is made to be versatile so ensemble forecasts could be used in future.

The diagnostics generated in Cloudburst use code from the open-source IMPROVER (Integrated Model post-PROcessing and VERification) repository, which offers a versatile toolbox of post-processing plugins. By enhancing this toolbox with new plugins and functionalities, we promote the reusability of post-processing components, fostering collaboration between the Blended Probabilistic Forecast team and the Cloudburst team. Any code added to the IMPROVER repository by Cloudburst is made as adaptable as possible so that it could be applied to deterministic forecasts or ensemble members.

In this presentation we will describe the first diagnostic generated within Cloudburst: precipitation type. This diagnostic was required to be consistent with the rain and snow rate so these were also rederived from the precipitation rate. Precipitation type, along with rain and snow rates, have now been operationalised and the data sent downstream for customers.