EURO4M - European Reanalysis and Observations for Monitoring

The overall goal of EURO4M was to develop the capacity for, and deliver the best possible and most complete (gridded) climate change time series and monitoring services covering all of Europe. These enable adequate descriptions of the status and evolution of the Earth system components.

More specifically the four objectives of EURO4M were: 1. generate time series of observation datasets and reanalyses of past observational data; 2. produce innovative and integrated high-quality data products for research and applications sector users; 3. reach out with data products and climate change services to the user community, stakeholders, policy-makers, and general public; 4. evolve into a future GMES service on climate change monitoring that is fully complimentary and supporting the existing core services. As the primary source of timely, targeted and reliable information about the state of the climate in Europe, EURO4M was an important building block for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative. No other coordinated contribution for this area existed or was planned within GMES at the start of the project. The GMES services, which had already entered into their pre-operational phase, were not designed to provide climate change monitoring information nor to report about high impact weather and climate extremes placed in an historical context.

SMHI performed a 22 km dynamical reanalysis with the HIRLAM 3D variational analysis system using conventional observations (SYNOP, AIREP and AMDAR, buoys, TEMP)for the years 1989-2010 (now extended to 1979-2013). The lateral boundary conditions came from the global ERA-Interim reanalysis. A large scale forcing was applied to benefit from the use of satellite radiances in the ERA reanalyses which involved a lot of quality control and bias corrections.

SMHI also developed a 2D-downscaling system (MESCAN) based on features from the present SMHI and MF systems MESAN, SAFRAN and CANARI. Moreover, SMHI run the MESAN system and produced a 5.5 km 2-D reanalysis of surface related parameters (rr24, t2m, tn and tx) for the years 1989-2010 (now also extended to 1979-2013). Downscaled forecasts from the HIRLAM reanalysis were used for the first guess. Neither precipitation nor minimum or maximum temperatures are assimilated in HIRLAM and additional data bases were searched for t2m observations not present in the ECMWF MARS archive used by the HIRLAM analysis.

Project partners:

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Met Office
University Rovira i Virgili
National Meteorological Administration
Meteo Swiss
Deutscher Wetterdienst
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
University of East Anglia (Climatic Research Unit)
Météo France

Funding

The EURO4M project was carried out during 2010-2013 and received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No 242093.

Contact person at SMHI: Per Undén.