This is a description of GloFAS v2.2. For an overview of other GloFAS releases, please see: GloFAS versioning system

Summary

GloFAS version 2.2 was implemented with several product related upgrades. Here is a summary of the main changes:

• New initial condition products introduced for several meteorological forcing variables
  • 3-day precipitation (preceding the forecast run date) and their anomalies (compared to GloFAS-ERA5 climatological mean)
  • 3-day snowmelt (preceding the forecast run date) and their anomalies (compared to GloFAS-ERA5 climatological mean)
  • Soil moisture at initial time (00 UTC) on the day of the forecast run.
  • Daily mean snow cover (for the 24-hour period preceding the forecast run date)
  • Daily mean 2 metre temperature (for the 24-hour period preceding the forecast run date)
• New forecast precipitation animated layer (up to next 10 days)
• Extended content for the reporting point (pop-up) product
  • Ensemble river flow forecasts displayed as boxplots
  • Time series graphs with meteorological forcing information on upstream average precipitation, snowmelt and 2 metre temperature
  • Time series graphs starting 5 days before the forecast date
  • Forecast overview table with the latest probabilities of the next 30 days
• Improved methodology for the global rapid risk assessment product
  • Impact impact of flood defences from FLOPROS estimates accounted for
  • Potential flood impact extended to information to land use (agriculture, urban), schools, health and education facilities
• Medium-range forecast skill layer to inform on the predictability of GloFAS 30-days
  
  • Reporting points showing the maximum lead time (in days) when the Continuous Ranked Probability Skill Score (CRPSS) still exceeds 0.5 compared to persistence or climatology as benchmark forecasts.
  • Pop-out windows showing the time series of CRPSS and associated CRPS for the persistence and climatology benchmark over the 3-day forecast time horizon

Additionally, the GloFAS service was also upgraded with additional GloFAS river discharge datasets available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS) (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/search?text=glofas)

• GloFAS reforecasts (30-day range) https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cems-glofas-reforecast?tab=overview
• GloFAS-Seasonal real-time forecasts https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cems-glofas-seasonal?tab=overview
• GloFAS-Seasonal reforecasts https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cems-glofas-seasonal-reforecast?tab=overview

GloFAS v2.2 Evaluation Results

• GloFAS v2.2 forecast skill (pre-print of the scientific paper evaluating forecast skill of GloFAS v2.2 submitted for peer review can be found here)
• The GloFAS v2.2 upgrade did not include any modelling change, therefore the river discharge data did not change either. This means that evaluation results available for v2.1 are also applicable for version 2.2.

Technical details

* ) This minor upgrade to v2.2 does not include any modelling changes and therefore data is the same as v2.1, hence remains GloFAS internal release  = 003