Q1 What was the biggest technical challenges to be able to participate in S2S/TIGGE projects at the beginning? What could improve next time?
Challenges:
- conversion to required GRIB2 format is a challenge, specially from NetCDF for example
- fixed reforecast production
- numerous S2S parameters
Ideas for improvement next time:
- conversion tools could be shared among the centres (using NetCDF)
- even within one organisation links to other projects and sharing of tools are important (KMA, BoM, CMA..)
- conversion tools from ECMWF should be shared
- new tools always welcomed (e.g. to convert to required accumulated sums since the forecast start)
Q2 What are the biggest challenges in the current production phase to ensure long-term minimal effort operations? How could the data archive centres support you more in that role?
Challenges:
- conversion scripts upgrade following model's upgrades
- sometimes even preventing to continue contribution to archive
- => official project support stressing its importance is helpful to find resources inside organisation
- sometimes even preventing to continue contribution to archive
- any operational issue can impact products for archives (which has not highest priorities)
- fixed forecast computation is big job after each model upgrade (CPU, storage..)
- TIGGE high resolution is really needed?
- who is using it? (limited domain with high res?)
- some stats could help to understand if it is used
- who is using it? (limited domain with high res?)
Q3 How could we improve cooperation between data providers and archiving centres (how to communicate/automate tasks/implement checking tools/test/implement model upgrades etc)?
- to share available used tools and ideas (encoding check; value limits checks; input file checks (number of fields..))
notify each time even everything went well (automatic email alerts, some status files)
Q4 What are good/bad features in the design of S2S/TIGGE databases (data format/structure/encoding/compression etc)?
- more complex GRIB packing might cause problems (higher CPU needed for data processing)
- smaller file sizes for acquisition still can be achieved using standard unix compression like gzip
Q5 What are good/bad features in the interfaces for getting S2S/TIGGE data (web portals/Web API/direct MARS access etc)?
Problematic features:
- GRIB to NetCDF conversion
- generally should work in ECMWF data portal but it is not visible
- => format: "netcfd" in WebAPI should help
- this should be documented
- => format: "netcfd" in WebAPI should help
- CMA provides on-the-flight conversion (using GRIB-API)
- generally should work in ECMWF data portal but it is not visible
- pre-computed data (e.g. eps means) before download (like IRI for S2S)
- not planned at the moment (e.g. in Copernicus CDS (Climate Data Store))
- can be partially done by MARS compute (for experienced users with ECMWF full access account)
- slow access and problems with downloading the data
- mainly from TIGGE survey
- big archive with data gaps affecting efficient data retrievement
- S2S data access should improved a lot thanks to staging most data on disc (form tapes)
- additional "tuning" still might help
- mainly from TIGGE survey
- interpolation is different in CMA & ECMWF archives
- can impact user results based on the same original data
Good features:
- interpolation!
Q6 What would be the most welcomed technical update of S2S/TIGGE databases from user point of view (data formats/data access/new products like time-series etc)?
- addition of pre-computed values like eps means, weekly means, climatology computed from reforecasts..
Q7 Do you know other data archives from similar projects which could be inspiring next time (information exchange/interoperability/data standards etc)?
- CMIP - tens of thousands users
- Copernicus CDS
Q8 Are you generally satisfied with the way the S2S/TIGGE databases have been created and supported until now? What would you like to change or improve the most?
- form surveys etc the archives seem to be very useful for scientific public
- but to keep it working in long term official support is needed - especially for TIGGE which has been agreed until end of 2019 only at the moment
- => workshop should stress this need
- but to keep it working in long term official support is needed - especially for TIGGE which has been agreed until end of 2019 only at the moment
User survey summary
User survey summary - preliminary findings summarising examples of comments from the user survey (only issues not acknowledgements)