The combined H-SAF and HEPEX workshops on coupled hydrology start today at ECMWF. Common sessions and workshops are taking place on Wednesday and Thursday this week to enable interaction and fuel discussions towards new applications.
H-SAF aims at developing, delivering and validating operational satellite-derived products of precipitation, snow and soil moisture.
The HEPEX mission is to demonstrate the added value of hydrological ensemble predictions for emergency management and water resources sectors to make decisions that have important consequences for economy, public health and safety.
H-SAF workshop objectives
The workshop will combine expertise from the NWP and hydrological communities, for better implementation of satellite products in NWP systems and hydrological models.
- To review the status of hydrological variables, retrieval algorithms and to exchange information and ideas on innovative approaches to prepare future satellites (e.g. GPM and NPOESS).
- To characterise the accuracy of hydrological products and discuss the validation metrics.
- To review the status of activities on model optimisation and hydrological products data assimilation and to discuss the impact of products on hydrological models.
- To promote the use of H-SAF products and attract interest for expanding the user community during CDOP-2 phase and follow-on.
HEPEX workshop objectives
HEPEX is concentrating on key questions such as what adaptations are required for meteorological ensemble systems to be coupled with hydrological ensemble systems? How should the existing hydrological ensemble prediction systems be modified to account for all sources of uncertainty within a forecast? What is the best way for the user community to take advantage of ensemble forecasts and to make better decisions based on them? Aims of the workshop:
- To showcase methods in pre-processing of NWP products as input into hydrological forecasting chains (contribution to the HEPEX Scientific Implementation Plan on Pre-processing).
- To demonstrate data assimilation in operational hydro-meteorological forecasting chains (contribution to the HEPEX Scientific Implementation Plan on Data assimilation). A particular focus will be on new measurements such as those provided by the H-SAF community.
A detailed programme 
is available.
The HEPEX part of the workshop will be broadcast live through webex. You can register for web broadcasts on the HEPEX website. You can also follow on Twitter using #hepex.
The HEPEX part of the workshop is co-sponsored by UNESCO’s FRIEND programme.