Recherche en Prévision Numérique Contributions to Numerical Weather Prediction

ABSTRACT

This is a review article invited by Atmosphere-Ocean to document the contributions of Recherche en Prévision Numérique (RPN) to Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). It is structured as a historical review and documents RPN’s contributions to numerical methods, numerical modelling, data assimilation, and ensemble systems, with a look ahead to potential future systems. Through this review, we highlight the evolution of RPN’s contributions. We begin with early NWP efforts and continue through to environmental predictions with a broad range of applications. This synthesis is intended to be a helpful reference, consolidating developments and generating broader interest for future work on NWP in Canada.

RÉSUMÉ

[Traduit par la redaction] Il s’agit d’un article de synthèse sollicité par Atmosphère-Océan pour documenter les contributions de la recherche en prévision numérique (RPN) à la prévision numérique du temps (PNT). Il est structuré comme une revue historique et documente les contributions de la RPN aux méthodes numériques, à la modélisation numérique, à l’assimilation de données et aux systèmes d’ensemble, avec un aperçu des futurs systèmes potentiels. Grâce à cette revue, nous mettons en évidence l’évolution des contributions de la RPN. Nous commençons par les premiers efforts en matière de PNT et poursuivons jusqu’aux prévisions environnementales avec un large éventail d’applications. Cette synthèse se veut une référence utile, consolidant les faits nouveaux et suscitant un intérêt plus large pour les travaux futurs sur la PNT au Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Numerical weather prediction
• numerical methods
• modelling
• data assimilation
• environmental prediction

Acknowledgements

The contributions by RPN to NWP have been made by a large number of researchers, managers, and computer scientists, many of whom have been mentors and colleagues that the authors have been privileged to know and work with. Many of them are cited in the extensive list of related references below and are effectively our co-authors. We gratefully acknowledge their support and contributions. Of particular note in regard to initiating this article was the early lead role of Gilbert Brunet. One purpose of this broad review article is to provide a synthesis that will consolidate and document this progress that will be a helpful reference for future work.

The transfer and implementation of the NWP systems have been achieved through very close collaboration with our MSC colleagues, particularly at the CMC (now CCMEP), many of whom are co-authors on the related publications. The authors would also like to thank Richard Hogue for his careful documentation of early progress in Canadian NWP from the perspective of the CMC. Michel Jean provided a helpful review of the manuscript.

Information on the CMC operational NWP systems is available at https://eccc-msc.github.io/open-data/msc-data/readme_en/.

The history of changes to models and prediction systems from 1995 to present is available at https://eccc-msc.github.io/open-data/msc-data/changelog_nwp_en/.

We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).