Helping to win the race against severe weather

With extreme weather events increasingly hitting news headlines around the world, accurate and timely forecasts are essential for effective disaster warning and mitigation systems. This, in turn, calls for joint research efforts within the global meteorological community to improve models and tools for predicting severe weather, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, floods, heat waves etc.

Improving predictions

The mission of TIGGE (THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble)  is to foster research on ensemble forecasting and the development of tools to improve the prediction of severe weather. This is based on the near real-time exchange of high volumes of data between multiple forecasting centres, including The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in the UK and the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) in China.

High-speed R&E network connections are vital for supporting data-intensive, meteorological research tools

By offering the highest capacity connection and the shortest network path between Europe and China, ORIENTplus and the pan-European GÉANT network enable daily, direct, seamless data exchange between TIGGE database archive centres, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts  and the China Meteorological Administration, connected to the UK’s research network Janet and the China Science and Technology Network (CSTNET) respectively.

Providing early warnings

High-speed R&E network connections, such as ORIENTplus, are vital for supporting data-intensive, meteorological research tools, such as the TIGGE ensemble archive, aimed at improving severe weather forecasting and providing early warnings to civil protection agencies and the public. The UK Met Office, also supported by Janet, directly benefits from the collaboration between ECMWF and CMA, enabled by ORIENTplus.

“TIGGE is a good example of international cooperation that provides a Petabyte-sized resource to the benefit of the research community as well as to providers and users of meteorological services. ECMWF alone has 2500 registered users worldwide. Without high-speed networks the daily database input and synchronisation between the archive centres would simply not be possible,” say Manuel Fuentes, TIGGE Project Manager, ECMWF.