Research to Operations: DAE Systems

The DAE Systems team develop, maintain and support Met Office software used for Data Assimilation and related processes.

Data Assimilation (DA) is a critical part of the Met Office’s Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Systems. The NWP forecast models rely on an accurate representation of the current atmospheric / ocean state (the “analysis”), which in turn depends on high quality observations and systems to process them efficiently and effectively.

The DAE Systems team are responsible for the provision of a number of systems to support DA: primarily the Observation Processing System (OPS) and the Variational DA System (VAR), as well as software to support observation monitoring and evaluation of research experiments.

The team is also increasingly involved in supporting development of Next Generation OPS and VAR systems, to provide enhanced scientific capability and software that is suitable for running on future High Performance Computer (HPC) architectures.

Key aims

  • Develop and maintain DA software suitable for running in operational and research Met Office NWP suites (global and regional, atmosphere and marine configurations)
  • Ensure operational DA systems meet quality, timeliness and robustness requirements of operational NWP
  • Ensure pull through of scientific developments in DA software, such as support for new satellites and observing networks, new processing techniques
  • Provide and support DA software systems for UM Partnership members around the world
  • Develop and maintain python software to support observation monitoring and trial suite evaluation
  • Coordinate regular routine and emergency updates to DA systems to ensure optimal use of available observations

Current activities

  • Provide stable releases of OPS and VAR systems to meeting requirements for successive science upgrades to operational NWP configurations
  • Support and development of Next Generation OPS and VAR systems
  • Provision of regular observation monitoring statistics to the Observation section
  • Enhancement of python software and suites for evaluating research trial results
  • Development of software and monitoring systems to ensure most effective use of Met Office computer resources

Related links