MISTRAL<\/a>, born from a European project and collecting weather data for the national territory. Recently, MISTRAL has been enriched with information from the CIMA Research Foundation, which has been providing its modeling results since April, thus contributing, on the one hand, to complement and enable comparison of the model results already employed by the portal and, on the other hand (but in the same vein), to support scientific research in meteorology.<\/p>\n\nWith Massimo Milelli, head of the Meteorology and Climate Department, let’s take a closer look at what it is all about.<\/p>\n\n
The MISTRAL project<\/h2>\n\n
“MISTRAL was a project funded under the European Horizon 2020 program, ended in 2021, which had led to the creation of a portal of the same name on which meteorological data from the observational network, analysis and forecasts (historical and real-time) are made available with high accuracy. These data are open, so they are available to everyone, from public administrations to citizens, as well as, of course, to operators in the sector,” Dr Milelli says. “MISTRAL is an excellent example of a project that does not end in itself: in fact, the portal created has continued to be used and improved even after the end of the project. Indeed, it will be the official portal of the ItaliaMeteo agency, Italy’s first civil meteorological agency.”<\/p>\n\n
Although it had not participated in the MISTRAL project, CIMA Research Foundation is one of the national agency’s weather agencies and, as such, provides its contribution and expertise in the field. In this case, helping to enrich the MISTRAL portal with additional data, which can also be used as a comparison to those already published: “The data published on MISTRAL are numerical data, probabilistic products and time series provided by the COSMO forecast model, developed by the international consortium of the same name and in use in Italy at the operational level. We wanted to make an additional contribution by also providing results from WRF, the model we use in CIMA Research Foundation.”<\/p>\n\n
WRF data, some technical information<\/h2>\n\n
WRF, an acronym that stands for Weather Research and Forecasting model, is a code developed by U.S. agencies and research centers, open source and capable of operating at small or very large spatial scales. For research and operational purposes, our researchers employ two distinct configurations of it, which enable them to provide forecasts at high resolutions. These are WRF-1.5km OL and WRF-2.5km 3DVAR, complex acronyms that describe the characteristics of the modeling run. “The reference to kilometers indicates the sides of the grid on which the model operates: thus, squares of 1.5×1.5 or 2.5×2.5 kilometers,” the researcher continues.<\/p>\n\n
“The second major difference between the two configurations is that WRF-1.5km OL works only on the basis of the initial data provided, such as humidity, wind, and so on. In contrast, WRF-2.5km 3DVAR involves two rounds of data assimilation: in short, it means that while the model is already processing the initial data, it is provided with additional data so that it can correct its forecasts based on the evolving weather situation.” In more detail, the model is provided with data from the radar instruments used by the Italian Civil Protection Department, which provides information on, for example, the location, height, and thickness of clouds at various altitudes-all additional information that allows it to reduce the uncertainty of the weather forecast.<\/p>\n\n
Enriching forecasts<\/h2>\n\n
The results derived from these model forecasts are those now integrated daily on the MISTRAL portal: “They represent our contribution toward an open access meteorology for everyone who may be of interest-so not only those who work in the field and need access to the data to operate but also the citizenry,” Dr Milelli says. “The data provided are technical and not immediately understandable (in fact, making the data easier to interpret could be a job for the next few years). However, this ensures that anyone can have access to official operational-level and scientifically more reliable weather data.”<\/p>\n\n
The results provided by WRF and COSMO, the researcher later points out, show no substantial differences. Any discrepancies between the forecasts provided by one or the other model, however, can also be an important comparison in terms of scientific advancement: in fact, they can be the basis on which to work to make the models increasingly effective and accurate. “At the moment, however, the main difference between the two models are the boundary conditions, in the sense that WRF starts from the U.S. Global Forecasting System model, while COSMO uses data from IFS, the model developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF)”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MISTRAL is a platform on which forecast meteorological data for Italy are collected, with free access; it will be the official portal of the ItaliaMeteo agency. Until a few months ago, the data collected on the platform came exclusively from the COSMO weather model: recently, CIMA Research Foundation wanted to make its own contribution and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-7177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meteorology-and-climate","tag-italy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7180,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions\/7180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}