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
- 11th Analysis Report of the NWP SAF AMV monitoring - April 1, 2025
The 11th Analysis Report (AR11) of the NWP SAF AMV monitoring has been released and is available from the Analysis Reports section of the AMV monitoring webpages. The analysis reports identify features from the monitoring statistics and document how these evolve over time. The status of existing features identified in the monitoring has been updated to reflect changes in the past two years. Several new data sets have been added to the monitoring since AR10. The assessment looks at NOAA-21 VIIRS AMVs, and the inclusion of DWD model data. Alongside these new data sets there have been changes in derivation […] - Meteosat 12 (MTG-I1) Monitoring - March 27, 2025
The monitoring pages have been enhanced to include Meteosat 12 (MTG-I1) near real-time (NRT) radiance quality monitoring (Hovmoeller, time-averaged geographical mean, and time series plots) and Atmospheric Motion Vector (AMV) monthly monitoring (density, map, zonal, and vector plots). For more information, please visit: Meteosat-12 FCI plots AMV Monthly Monitoring - RTTOV v14.0 released - February 10, 2025
RTTOV v14.0 has been released. This is a major update to the software with numerous improvements and new features, including: changes to the representation of the atmospheric profile to improve consistency with NWP model fields; implementation of the microwave scattering science within RTTOV (the separate “RTTOV-SCATT” model no longer exists); improvements to the accuracy and speed of the MFASIS-NN fast visible cloud solver and support for additional channels; a new heterogeneous surface capability allowing multiple surface types to be associated with each profile; and support for the CAMEL v3 land surface emissivity atlases. The full list of updates is available […] - AAPP update 8.14 has been released - January 20, 2025
This release includes an additional module for processing level 1B data from the Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS1). It also adds support for MWHS-2 and MWTS-3 on FY-3F (hdf5 ingest and BUFR encoding), as well updating amsua_clparams.dat. For details, see the Release History. - Summary and recommendation from the NWP SAF Workshop on Satellite Observations of the Earth System Interfaces - January 16, 2025
The NWP SAF Workshop on Satellite Observations of the Earth System Interfaces was held from 19 to 22 November 2024 at ECMWF. The workshop focused on advancing the exploitation of satellite data in NWP, emphasizing the importance of interface observations that are sensitive to multiple components like the atmosphere, land, sea ice, snow, and the ocean. Key recommendations include enhancing the use of existing and new satellite observations, leveraging machine learning for complex surfaces, and promoting coupled data assimilation for better exploitation of interface observations. The workshop highlighted the need for collaboration among scientific communities and space agencies to address […]