The blog
El Niño continues to develop in tropical Pacific regions. Forecasters expect the phenomenon to continue until spring, with 75 to 85 % likely to become an intense event. A stronger El Niño – the definition of which will follow – means that it is more likely that we will see its effects reflected in winter temperatures and rain and snow patterns around the world.
Source & screenshots : NOAA – Emily Becker freely translated. Read more …
After three years of La Niña phenomenon (¹) in the tropical Pacific Ocean (from mid-2020 to mid-2023) having brought a fairly calm meteorological situation to Polynesia : regular trade winds, lack of hurricane, mainly dry weather, this idyllic situation will be reversed with the announced return (²) of the El Niño phase of the ENSO climate phenomenon (El Niño Southern Oscillation). Finally, idyllic, it wasn't for Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Melanesia and western Australia, which experienced episodes of intense rainfall well above normal and an upsurge in hurricanes during the same period. Read more …
Florence Rabier, Director General of ECMWF, has developed February the 13 th European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast for 2023 (¹). She announced a major update to the forecasting model. IFS (²) scheduled for June 2023. Read more …
Europe is moving forward slowly, but she moves forward… towards free access to data from public services ! March, the 21 December 2022 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union, under the reference C/2022/9562, The " Regulations of the European Commission establishing a list of specific high-value datasets and the modalities of their publication and re-use". Read more …
March, the October Marine Guide 2022 for recreational boating from Météo-France has been updated. All the detailed information and ways to take the weather forecast at sea, from the coast to the open sea. All VHF frequencies and times, SSB, NavTex, radio. Read more …
With the version Routing & Navigation 2.0.81, Weather4D supports weather files in GRIB2 format by external download. For example, the very high resolution model ICON-D2 (¹) of German Weather Service (DWD) for Northern Europe can be opened in the app. Read more …
More and more of you have adopted the Iridium GO! for its easy way to request GRIB files, directly from Weather4D and some other applications. But some also want to transfer these files to a PC to import them into Windows software. (as you know, no one is perfect !). An easy solution is available : the messaging app Air Share, compatible iOS/iPadOS (¹). [Update 30 th 2022] Warning : the application has changed its identifier code on the AppStore. Read more …
Trafalgar Hit for the flagship of European meteorology, despite Brexit and contrary to what had been planned (¹), March the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast will stay in England ! Even better, a new headquarter for ECMWF to be fully funded by the UK government through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Proof that the British have gone all out to keep this European scientific hotspot in Reading (²). Read more …
I've been asked this question regularly, but until now I've never wanted to give my opinion on the subject publicly, so as not to offend anyone or create unnecessary controversy.. But after doing so many of my training courses, why not express it to me openly ?
My opinion, forged by observation and a long professional experience in pleasure boating (¹), is that this assertion of the systematic optimism of GRIB forecasts regarding wind strength, which unfortunately persists, no longer has any reason to exist, and has not been verified in practice for some time. Read more …
[Update 29 July 2022]
For several years, forecast files in GRIB format have been widely used in meteorological applications.. The majority of forecast models have been made freely available by meteorological services, all countries included. Apps like XyGrib, LuckGrib, SailGrib, Weather4D and others, offer a selection of atmospheric and oceanic models, up to 60 Weather Models, Waves and currents for Weather4D, more than thirty models with LuckGrib, in example. But there are always others that can usefully complement the standard offerings of these applications. Read more …