The Satellite Application Facility for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP SAF) aims to improve and support the interface between satellite data/products and European activities in NWP.
The NWP SAF is one of several EUMETSAT SAFs (Satellite Application Facilities). Utilising specialist expertise from the Member States, SAFs are dedicated centres of excellence for processing satellite data and form an integral part of the distributed EUMETSAT Application Ground Segment. Further information about SAFs is available on the EUMETSAT web site.
The SAF for NWP interacts, where appropriate, with related work in other SAFs and in other EUMETSAT activities in order to enhance collaboration and to minimise duplication of effort.
Recent News and Updates
- Update to the Web Based Satellite Sounding Training Application - February 11, 2026
Improvements to the WeSS4T web application: https://sounding.trainhub.eumetsat.int/, has been deployed on the Eumetsat Training Hub, hosted by the EWC. The update increases traffic load capability and improves overall user navigation. The application is an excellent tool for training in radiative transfer and for introducing the basic concept of data assimilation. Feedback regarding the use of this application is encouraged and appreciated. - RTTOV v14.1 has been released - February 10, 2026
RTTOV v14.1 has been released. Updates from v14.0 include: MFASIS-NN neural network fast solver for visible/near-IR scattering simulations improved to support additional VIS/NIR channels for cloudy simulations and now supports aerosol simulations with CAMS optical properties, new cloud overlap options have been implemented, new option to turn off cosmic microwave background radiation contribution (for use with obs that are processed to remove this), new option to exclude sun-glint from the solar sea reflectance model (for certain simulated imagery applications), optimisation of the SURFEM-Ocean microwave sea surface emissivity model for gfortran builds, optimisation of the DOM solar solver with Rayleigh multiple […] - Migration of “DBNet monitoring” email alerts to generic sender - January 9, 2026
The DBNet monitoring data outage and data consistency email alerts had previously been sent from a personal Met Office email account. However, as this is a service run on behalf of EUMETSAT’s NWP SAF, it seems appropriate that a more generic email address is used as sender. Therefore, as of the 9th January, these email alerts are sent from the email address dbnet-monitoring@metoffice.gov.uk, with the Display Name “NWPSAF DBNet monitoring”. - Extension of the Data Reception Status Overview Page - December 3, 2025
The data reception status overview page provides near real time information in the form of traffic light overviews for current data numbers and data timeliness for the various satellite instrument data sets. This page has now been extended to also show current timeliness compared to fixed timeliness thresholds in addition to the overviews comparing current data numbers and timeliness to their respective typical values over previous months. Results are based on an auto-alert system evaluating data reception statistics at both the German Weather Service and the UK Met Office. Please visit the Overview of data availability and timeliness status page […] - The NWP-SAF 1D-Var v2.1 has been released. - November 28, 2025
This release adds support for RTTOV v14. Support for RTTOV v13 and v12 is maintained. Support for RTTOV v11 has been removed. The new version is backwards compatible with v2.0 with the following exceptions: changes to the Sample Background data mean the sample data for each RTTOV version has changed, changed limit of BT difference in O-B check so more tests now pass, changes to SSMIS setup to account for new additions in RTTOV-14. For additional information, please refer to the the software pages https://nwp-saf.eumetsat.int/site/software/1d-var/.