Supply of Numerical Weather Forecasting Systems (NWP) with Associated Equipment and Training

Origin of funding: Ministry of Defence (GoB)

Name of client: Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD)

Detailed description of project:

Bangladesh is one of the world's most natural disaster-prone nations. Located at the delta of the GangaBrahmaputra-Meghna river systems, it is regularly exposed to extreme weather events such as floods, tropical cyclones associated with storm surges and severe thunderstorms which have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives over the past four decades. The purpose of this project was to supply a numerical weather forecasting system for the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) developing a high-accuracy forecasting service.

Basic features:

- GFS resolution: 0.25 º

- GFS updates 00Z 00Z, 06Z, 12Z, 18Z

- GFS length of run 240 h 240 h

- GFS frequency: 3 h

- WRF domains: 9 km, 3 km, 1 km (6 sub-domains in specific disaster-prone provinces)

- WRF updates: 00Z 00Z, 06Z, 12Z, 18Z

- Vertical levels: 60

- Physic options: Calibrated

- Data assimilation: GSI 3DVAR

- Physiographical database USGS and SRTM 30s

- Forecast length: 5 days (domain 9 km), 3 days domain 3 km, 1 day domain 1 km

- Correction: Ratio adjustment correction

Type and scope of services provided:

Basic features:

• Support in the HPC implementation:

o HW Total cores: 224 (no hyperthreading)
o HW CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 2.5 GHz
o HW memory: 2048 GB
o HW storage: 66 TB

• Implementation of HPC Operative System

o Compilation: Intel Fortran + Intel MPI
o OS: Ubuntu Centos

• Implementation of a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system

o WRF model compilation
o GFS operative
o WRF calibration
o Physiographical databases improvement
o Data assimilation
o Bias correction

• Training activities for BMD officers