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ALADIN Numerical Weather Prediction Project

A few words about ALADIN in : ArabicBulgarianCroatianCzechDutchFrenchGermanHungarianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSlovakSlovenian

The concept of the ALADIN project was proposed by Météo-France in 1990, with the aim of building a mutually beneficial collaboration with the National Meteorological Services of Central and Eastern Europe. This collaboration was to be in the field of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), which provides the basis for the forecasting tools of modern meteorology. The easy to translate acronym (Aire Limitée Adaptation dynamique Développement InterNational) clearly indicates the major axes of this project:

  • to prepare and maintain a NWP system for use on limited geographic areas, this requiring only moderate computing power while allowing a zoom effect with respect to the coupling model ARPEGE;
  • to work with small domains and high spatial resolution in mind: the informed assumption here is the important meteorological events at those fine scales (local winds, breezes, thunderstorms lines, ...) are mainly the result of a so-called "dynamical" adaptation to the characteristics of the earth's surface;
  • to build from scratch an international top-level NWP tool, in order that all partners may take part in a true NWP development, with the aim that everyone may eventually use the result of the common effort.

About one hundred scientists, from fifteen countries are permanently contributing to the progress of ALADIN NWP system (more than 250 person-years of total work for the first ten years of the project's life) which is now operated every day in fourteen Euro-Mediterranean countries on a huge variety of computing platforms ranging from a PC Cluster under Linux to Vector Computers.

ALADIN also allowed to build a high-level scientific team, distributed in fifteen countries that managed to reach the level of the best research centres, as witnessed by the PhD theses and publications in international journals.

The assembly of partners, the workshops, the informal meetings, the newsletters regularly offer opportunity of various exchanges within the ALADIN community.