On the occasion of the first Assembly of Partners, the Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by eleven directors of National (Hydro)Meteorological Services (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia)) in the presence of the Secretary-General of WMO and the French Ministry of Transports. It fixes the frame of evolution of the ALADIN international co-operation. It first recalls the current principles guiding research, development and maintenance of ALADIN. Then, it intends to precise the conditions of use of the ALADIN software. Conditions of membership to the ALADIN Project are then defined.
On the occasion of this Assembly, a brochure was prepared by the ALADIN international team at that time in Toulouse: this document summarises the progress report of the ALADIN project as presented at this Assembly.
Thirteen countries were represented. Two amendments to the Memorandum of Understanding were unanimously accepted by all Partners. They deal with the conditions of use of the ALADIN software.
The main steps of implementation or development of ALADIN-BELGIUM, ALADIN-FRANCE, ALADIN-LACE and ALADIN-MAROC models were presented. ALADIN-BELGIUM is at the present the operational mesoscale model with the finest resolution in the world. ALADIN-FRANCE whose domain has been extended in order to provide suitable coupling data for Portugal has been declared fit for operational use after a long validation process. The integration of the ALADIN-LACE model in the operational forecasts area is working well : this integration has been tested successfully during the severe flooding events in July 1997. The presentation about ALADIN-MAROC essentially dealt with plans about assimilation of TOVS and radar data.
The switch to ISBA was the main point of the discussion about operational problems. The problem of the code maintenance was raised. The necessity for each Members to devote staff to the maintenance and the core developments of ALADIN was pointed out.
The 1998 ALADIN Partners commitments were presented and the 1997 commitments were assessed : realisation at 98%. The project is on continuous growth and development but the report on the evaluation of the ALADIN project also underlined some crucial problems such as the too frequent renewal of the research teams in several countries or the separation between research and maintenance tasks to be devoted to the ALADIN visitors in Toulouse. Among the other main outlooks for the project discussed, the need of a moderate shift of interest from physical parametrization to dynamical and numerical problems appeared. As an inter-Partners collaboration, Météo-France proposed to ALADIN members a license free of charge for national use of MEDIA model. A collaboration for the development of an ALADIN-MEDIA model for emergency situations was wished by different participants.
Please consult the Minutes of the Assembly for more details.
The participants to this Assembly attended some lectures on :
the history, the current status and the prospect for ALADIN-LACE application,
presentation of the status of the new telecommunication network RMDCN,
and on scientific topics :
high-resolution dynamics,
how to trigger and harmonise ALADIN-based applications,
data assimilation.
Discussions were mainly about :
assessment of the 1998 scientific program,
draft ECMWF/Météo-France agreement for the IFS/ARPEGE/ALADIN software protection,
amendments to ALADIN Memorandum of Understanding ,
technical overview of the project at the end of 1998 and 1999 perspective,
the scientific plan and its implications ( Second medium-term (1999-2001) research plan for ALADIN).
Discussions about maintenance and training problems were delayed to the next Assembly.
Other topics (code maintenance, closer co-ordination for applications, ...) were addressed but without getting to a conclusion.
For the coming year, a 3-headed team has been created to initiate and co-ordinate the exchanges, collect proposals and prepare the discussions for the next Assembly of partners.
In the future, a strict rule will be followed to count each country's
participation in the project: those who have not answered during the 3-months'
delay will get a 0-contribution; one official focal point per Partner will
be intrusted; a request will be sent soon to every Directors.
Statistics of ALADIN participation will not only be drawn up for Toulouse
part, Deported part and Total part of the ALADIN project but also for the
LACE part in Praha. All these new rules are part of the amendments of the
Memorandum of
Understanding voted during this Assembly.
Please consult the Minutes of the 3rd Assembly for more details.
Approval of the revised 2nd Medium-Term (1999-2001) research plan for ALADIN :
* Three main topics were focussed: maintenance
and improvement of the operational versions, high resolution modelling and
data assimilation. For each of these 3 generic targets, the relative importance
of themes was established and these were distributed, by priorities, in very/high,
medium and long term.
* At the same time, it was stressed what work was completed on those themes
during 1999 and the expected work to be done during the year 2000 on: Physics,
Dynamics (including coupling) and Data Assimilation.
* The approved medium-term research plan is available on
our public ftp.
the commitments for the maintenance :
Stricter rules for participation to the maintenance effort inside the
ALADIN partnership were accepted :
* The participation of each ALADIN team to phasing must be at least 1 person
once a year. It can be more for the largest teams (more than 4 full-time
equivalent persons for instance). The minimum size of a phasing team is 8
persons for a full cycle, less for intermediate cycles if any.
* Only one inexperienced person per phasing team is accepted. This newcomer
must of course have some basic knowledge of ALADIN.
* An ordered list of all ALADIN scientists will be elaborated. Persons will
be invited following this list in "rotation mode", so that everyone will
contribute but not very often.
* Each team will send its own part of the list, mentioning constraints if
any, to the Toulouse support team. Otherwise the list of quarterly contributions
will be used.
* Phasing is centralised in Toulouse since a very close co-operation between
ALADIN and ARPEGE scientists is required for this crucial exercise. The stays
are usually 6 weeks long, costs may be supported by Météo-France.
Deported validation of cycles are accepted as contributions to phasing exercises
exceptionally, for technical options that cannot be validated in Toulouse.
It was also admitted to dedicate 10% of the ALADIN effort on the maintenance.
Maintenance includes not only phasing, but also code optimisation and cleaning,
code documentation and the preparation of databases for the use of all partners.
the commitments for the ALADIN school on high resolution modelling :
In accordance with the decision taken during the Assembly, the Directors of ALADIN NMS were asked to commit on the participation of members of their National Meteorological Service to the ALATNET Seminar on "High Resolution" Modelling : full commitments on the number of students, on the previous knowledge the previous knowledge of NWP and ALADIN these will have previously acquired and on their future involvement in the project have been received and the decision to organise the Seminar was taken;
the verification's project : Presently the verification issue is handled in Europe at several levels:
* EWGLAM (with co-ordination of Germany);
* SRNWP (with a focal point by the Netherlands);
* ALADIN,
with no real effect yet. A well running example is the one by WMO on the
scores for global modelling, with a decentralised way of functioning. The
Assembly decided to endorse the following actions:
(1) the need for each NMS to nominate a contact point dedicated to verification
: the e-mail list (verifala @meteo.fr) contains the addresses of the nominated
contact points;
(2) start a WMO like, i.e. decentralised, exchange of scores (but using the
same definitions and same parameters as in the EWGLAM project);
(3) computation by everyone of scores for its geographical domain using the
stations recommended by EWGLAM (with special attention of Morocco, not included
in EWGLAM);
(4) scores sent back to all other contact points.
If this first attempt is successful, it will open the way to a broader co-operation,
at the European level for the exchange of scores, and towards a better co-ordination
of subjective verification and the collection of typical situations inside
the ALADIN partnership.
Please consult the Minutes of the 4th Assembly
The 5th Assembly of ALADIN Partners took place in Vienna (Austria) on November 24, 2000. Main conclusions are :
· The MoU is extended for another 6 months : the working group (France, Romania, Slovenia) who received in 1999 the mission to draft the new Memorandum of Understanding will continue its work following the recommendations of the Assembly.
· The signature of the new MoU is expected for the end of May during an intermediate Assembly of Partners, that will be organised jointly with the 2001 celebrations (10 years of ALADIN, 7 years of operations, ...). A working group gathering some directors (Austria, Belgium, Czech, France) will prepare this. This might be also an opportunity to make some publicity for ALADIN (embassies, EU, ...).
· A working group (Belgium, France, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia) was created to harmonise the evaluation of the ALADIN effort in each NMS.
Please consult the Minutes of the 5th Assembly
The 6th Assembly of ALADIN Partners took place in Casablanca (Morocco) on January 14, 2002 :
The 1999-2001 research plan was assessed : while considering objectives versus progress, it appears that more efforts had to be deployed on physics and data assimilation.
A 2002-2004 research plan was proposed for training, maintenance, operations, applications, verification, coupling, dynamics, physics, data assimilation, predictability and organisation of research. The discussion aimed especially the verification point (verification is still at the same level than in 1999) and suggested possible solutions : local data bases, exchange of results, co-ordination scheme, ... About the other topics, it was mentioned the too high number of topics with a high priority : it was suggested to distinguish between “transversal priorities” and the other less general priorities : a new working group “Science and Strategy Committee” will be in charge of this kind of management tasks (to supervise priorities and co-operation with other SRNWP groups, to follow AROME project and to report to the Assembly on progress of the scientific plan). The working group has 6 permanent members ( Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Morocco and Romania) and other partners are free to join the meetings on a case to case basis.
It was decided to merge the two ALADIN workshops (scientific issues, operational aspects) into one enlarged one.
In response to the official request of ACMAD (African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development) to be somehow associated to the ALADIN group, a small working group (Belgium, Croatia, France, Hungary, Morocco and Romania) is created to work on questions of co-operation between the ALADIN group and non-member African NMSs.
As these two new working groups were created by the assembly, the Technical Co-operation Standing Committee established by the new MoU is temporarily left aside.
The AROME (Application of Research to Operations at Mesoscale) project was presented : AROME was launched late 2001 at Météo-France with the aim to prepare list of objectives, needed research tasks and planification steps for a target around 2009. It could concern a merge of ALADIN and Meso-NH bests to create a new configuration taking advantage of the two models especially at high resolution. This could have obviously heavy consequences on all ALADIN project components. ALADIN Partners, through the Practical Co-ordination Management Structure will be invited at Météo-France AROME meetings.
Some fundings will decrease (MAE, LACE, ...) while Météo-France will continue financing tasks related to maintenance. ALATNET is dedicated to “ALATNET actions” with regular justification work to European Union. Thus, in order to reduce some useless charges, as far as possible, people coming on maintenance stays in Toulouse on Météo-France funding will be asked to buy (much less expensive) plane ticket at home (they will be reimbursed in Toulouse). Anyway, more and more deported work in needed but ... at the same time heavy supervising work is also needed.
Please consult the Minutes of the 6th Assembly for more details.
The 7th assembly of ALADIN partners was held in Bucharest, Romania, on the 28th of October, 2002 :
Please consult the Minutes of the 7th Assembly for more details.
The 8th assembly of ALADIN partners was held in Cracow, Poland, on the 31st of October, 2003.
The 9th assembly of ALADIN partners was held in Split, Croatia, on October, 29-31, 2004.
Documents, presentations and minutes are available here.The 10th assembly of ALADIN partners was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, on October 21, 2005.
Agenda, documents, presentations and minutes are available here.