The end of the project is approaching and we are planning our final event for the project. This is planned to take place over two days and is structured around the main themes of CONFESS.

When: afternoon of 5^th of March and morning of 6^th of March

Where: ECMWF offices in Reading (UK)

The agenda is structure around two important themes of CONFESS:  Land (5^th afternoon) and Aerosols (6^th morning). The meeting will end with a panel discussion on the outcomes of CONFESS. The aim is to present a summary of project achievements, legacy, and discuss ways forward.

CONFESS was actively present in the Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Summit, which took place in Reading during the 3^rd -7^th of July 2023, to celebrate the success of 10 years of the S2S WWRP-WCRP program and look at the future.  200 people attended the meeting in person and about 50 attended the meeting online, although the meeting was not hybrid.

The activities of CONFESS are highly relevant for advancing the prediction capabilities at the sub-seasonal and seasonal time scales. Both land/vegetation processes and aerosols, which CONFESS deals with, feature as thematic topics of the S2S program. CONFESS contributed to the summit by inviting international experts on Land (Yongkang Xue, from University of California, Los Angels- UCLA) and Vegetation (Julia Green, from University of Berkley). Both gave invited keynote presentations, and took part on offline discussions and working groups.

The research within CONFESS was presented by Constantin Ardilouze (CNRM, CNRS, Meteo-France, University of Toulous), Angela Benedetti (ECMWF), Magdalena Balmaseda (ECMWF) and Retish Senan (ECMWF). Constantin Ardilouze presented CONFESS research in the land-process session on Tuesday afternoon (Predicting the Leaf Area Index in a dynamical S2S forecasting system). His presentation focused on advances with prognostic vegetation, which identified gaps and challenges ahead. Constantin also gave a poster on the flow-dependence of wintertime S2S prediction skill over Europe.  Angela Benedetti gave a poster on The impact of biomass burning emissions on seasonal prediction: a study using the ECMWF’s coupled Ensemble Prediction System the impact of biomass burning on S2S forecasts of temperature, with a collection of case studies. Magdalena Balmaseda gave an overview talk on the CONFESS project and achievements in the modelling session on Thursday afternoon, with the talk entitled Towards consistent representation of temporal variability of boundary forcings in S2S reforecasts and real-time forecasts. Retish Senan took part in a break-out group for coordinated experimentation on land processes. 

Yongkang Xue (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)) gave a presentation on Tuesday afternoon on  Progress Towards for better Understanding of the Sources of Global S2S Precipitation Prediction using Land Temperatures Anomaly over high mountains: A brief overview from the GEWEX/LS4P Initiative . Julia Green (University of Berkley) gave a presentation on  An emergent Constraint to Improve the Representation of Biosphere-Atmosphere Feedbacks in Earth System Models

CONFESS work has progressed well. It has accomplished major developments with promising prospects for being implemented in next generation of C3S, and partners are fully engaged with the evaluation of results.  However, due to a variety of factors we have experienced some delay, which due to the interconnected nature of the CONFESS workflow. Because a thorough evaluation is critical for the transition of research developments into operational services, we have added 5 months to extend the duration of CONFESS.

This  extra time means we have the opportunity to ensure wider uptake of CONFESS outputs and results. For example we are working to deliver additional runs to ensure project outputs are relevant for operational implementation. This contributes to us achieving the objective of CONFESS to improve next generation of C3S system.

We are also working to facilitate the usability of CONFESS developments to other Horizon Europe projects such as ASPECT and CERISE, and also potentially for other programmes.

Featured Article titled: Updating land and aerosol properties to improve reanalyses and seasonal forecasts

Authors: Magdalena A. Balmaseda; Tim Stockdale; Souhail Boussetta; Retish Senan; Gianpaolo Balsamo; Angela Benedetti; Tanya Warnaars

Newsletter Number 174 – Winter 2023 (Published in January 2023)

To access the full article please visit:

https://www.ecmwf.int/en/elibrary/81330-newsletter-no-174-winter-202223

CONFESS hosted its second General Assembly with project partners on the Wednesday, 1st December 2021 from 09:00 UK Time.

All work package leaders and most of the project team members were present and presented the progress of the project.

Presentations from the meeting are available below.

The month of May will be a busy time for the CONFESS consortium who will be presenting at a number of prestigious international events. The end of May is when EGU will hold their Annual General Assembly meeting, which is the same week as the ESA-Living Planet Symposium. These events will see our consortium members travelling to Vienna, where A. Alessanndri (CNR-ISAC) will host a session at EGU where five presentations related to CONFESS will be given. A strong representation will also be in Bonn to present the work of CONFESS at the European Space Agency’s 2022 Living Planet Symposium, which is held every three years. This is an exiting time for the project as we are eager to share our results with the community who can benefit from our findings as well as feedback on our project achievements. These and future presentations over the summer of 2022 are listed in our presentation page.