Following preliminary scientific and technical studies, we have developed an ambitious plan for the next change of horizontal resolution. This resolution upgrade will keep the same resolution in spectral space as in current operations, but will use a much denser set of grid-points to better resolve physical processes. The associated grids will be referred to as "cubic octahedral", with the HRES and ENS resolutions being labelled as TCo1279 and TCo639 respectively, corresponding to a grid spacing of around 9km and 18km. The resulting meteorological fields will be more accurate and contain much more energy in the finer scales. The plan is to start running extensive Research experimentation in summer, provide first technical test data in autumn this year, for an implementation in early 2016.
We will post regular updates on these pages to keep you informed of progress on this resolution upgrade.