On 18 April distinguished guests visited LHMS Our service was visited by speakers from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF Liaison Group), as well as meteorologists from the Department of Hydrology and Climatology of Vilnius University.

Throughout the day, there were six different presentations. Stijn Vermoote (Head of ECMWF’s User Outreach and Involvement Unit) gave an overview presentation on ECMWF’s strategy, ongoing updates and the Copernicus programme. After a short break, ECMWF analyst Ervin Zsoter presented the ECMWF products available for precipitation and hazardous weather forecasts. He also provided information about EFAS and GloFAS (European and Global Flood Awareness Systems) and their benefits and challenges. Emma Pidduck (ECMWF Data Policy and Partnerships Coordinator) talked about ECMWF’s efforts to migrate the output of its daily calculation data from the GRIB version 1 file format to GRIB version 2, which is much more advanced than the old one. Tim Stockdale (Chief Scientist, Research Unit) gave a presentation on seasonal-long-term forecasts.

In a series of presentations, LHMT experts and other audience members, both live and remotely, saw that in spite of the various challenges, ECMWF processes and models continue to evolve, and that the near future is promising as well.

Photos show some of the highlights of the conference, which took place in the renovated LHMT meeting room ☁