MEETINGS

EDITORIAL

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Acknowledgements
The WMO Secretariat would like to express its appreciation to all those who have contributed material to the "Operational Newsletter".

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NOTIFICATION FROM AUSTRALIA (see METNO A2304)
Due to the major refurbishment of station 94299 (Willis Island) the upper-air program of observations at 00 (RW), 06 (W), 12 (W) and 18 (W) UTC will be temporary suspended until further notice.  A temporary downgrading of its synoptic program will also take place.

NOTIFICATION FROM MAURITIUS (see METNO A2504)
As from 29 May 2004, station 61995 resumed the launch of radiosondes daily at  1200 UTC.

National Programmes:
Australia 
Canada (the current report is unavailable)
France 
New Zealand 
United Kingdom (the current report is unavailable)  
United States of America

European Group on Ocean Stations
ARGOS monthly status report (due to technical difficulties the current report is unavailable)

The following changes have been received from:

RTH Moscow: RU03617O.txt (see METNO MC2604.txt)

RTH Offenbach:
ED04607o.txt (see METNO MC2404.txt)
ED05615o.txt (see METNO MC2504.txt)

EARLY DELIVERY FORECASTING SYSTEM

On 29 June 2004 ECMWF implemented the Early Delivery Forecasting System which comprises two main 6-hour 4D-Var analysis and forecast cycles for 00 and 12 UTC (DA stream) with two additional 12-hour 4D-Var analysis (DCDA stream) and first guess forecast cycles. These additional cycles are run with a delayed cut-off time of 14 hours (with respect to the nominal analysis times).  The analysis observation windows are 21-09 UTC for the 00 UTC analysis and 09-21 UTC for the 12 UTC analysis.  The first guess forecasts are used to initialise the main operational 00 and 12 UTC assimilation and forecast cycles.  Trials have shown that the quality of the two first guesses is sufficiently high to allow an early running of the 6-hour 4D-Var assimilations at around 0400 and 1600 UTC without any loss in quality in the ensuing forecasts compared with the previous operational system.

ECMWF products on the GTS are now inserted some three to four hours earlier in line with the timing of the Early Delivery Forecasting System.

Volume II
National Coding Procedures with regard to international Code Forms

Notification from Austria (effective immediately):

FM 12 SYNOP

AUSTRIA
7 wwW₁W₂                Change second paragraph to:
ww is coded 10 when the visibility is 5 kilometres or less but not less that 1 kilometre and the relative humidity is equal or greater than 80 per cent.

NEW revised version now available

Based on the recommendation of JCOMM-I (Akureyri, June 2001), the WMO Secretariat has successfully implemented a revised version of the catalogue format prepared by the JCOMM Subgroup on Marine Climatology.  The latest quarterly file (31 March 2004) of ships metadata of all VOS in the new format is now available on our web site: http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/ois/pub47/pub47-home.htm 

Quarterly files (30 June 1999 to 31 March 2004) of ships metadata of all VOS in the new format are also available on the WMO FTP server for use by  members.  The files pub47ships990630 to pub47ships040331 may be accessed via  FTP: ftp://ftp.wmo.int/wmo-ddbs

Members operating VOS are encouraged to provide the WMO Secretariat, on a quarterly basis, with ship metadata of the VOS recruited in accordance with the new format, preferably by diskette or e-mail.