Newsletter October 2024

4 November 2024 09:30 CET – 10:50 CET

The KNMI internal file distribution system, called VIVID, will receive maintenance on Monday 4 November 2024 08:30 UTC (09:30 CET). The maintenance will take approximately 80 minutes to complete.The expected impact on the KNMI Data Platform, during the upgrade, will be:

• No file updates or additions on most Open Data API datasets
• No updates of EDR API collections
• No updates of WMS service datasets
• The Open Data API, EDR API and WMS service will remain accessible with existing data.

After the maintenance has finished, the impact will be that updates will continue, and missed files will retroactively be added. It is expected to take approximately 30 minutes before the missed dataset files have been added. The order in which missed files will be added is undefined.
The maintenance can be postponed if weather conditions do not allow for it. This will only be communicated via KDP Developer Portal News and the KDP Community Slack. Backup dates in case of postponement are 11, 12 and 18 November 2024 with the same time window.

We have updated our documentation page for our HARMONIE datasets. This page provides an overview of the technical specifications and how to use all HARMONIE Cy43 datasets, including specifications and updates also mentioned in this newsletter. If you are missing any information, feel free to contact us.

New parameters

On October 8, new parameters were added to a number of HARMONIE Cy43 products. These parameters have already been incorporated into HARMONIE's improved documentation.

• HARMONIE Cy43 P1: snow depth in meters (code 66) on level type 105 at 0 meters.
• HARMONIE Cy43 P3: atmospheric pressure (1), geopotential altitude surface (6), total precipitation (61, TRI 4) and snow depth in meters (66) at the surface (leveltype 105, 0 meters). In addition, dew point temperature (17) at 2 meters and temperature and wind (11, 33 and 34) at wind turbine height were added. The wind turbine heights are at leveltype 105 at 50, 100, 200 and 300 meters.
• HARMONIE P5: atmospheric pressure (1), geopotential height surface (6) and temperature (11) at the surface (level type 105 at 0 meters).
• HARMONIE Cy43 P2a/b and P4a/b: wind (33, 34) at 50 meters (level type 105, 50 m).

Because some parameters will be removed on November 18 (see below), there is now also room to add some additional parameters to HARMONIE Cy43 P1. Soil temperature (11) will be added for the surface layer (level type 105, 800), at -7 cm deep (level type 105, 801) and at about -50 cm deep (level type 105, 802).

Removal and deduplication of parameters

On November 18, a number of parameters will be removed from the HARMONIE Cy43 P1 and P3 datasets, which were unintentionally included after the transition from Cy40 to Cy43. In the HARMONIE Cy43 P1 dataset, temperature (code 11) and wind (33, 34) at the 100, 200 and 300 hPa are removed. This means that no parameters with level type 100 remain for P1. In HARMONIE Cy43 P3, the same parameters (11, 33 and 34) at the 200 hPa are removed, leaving altitudes with level type 300, 500, 700, 850 and 925 hPa.

In addition, duplicate parameters have been removed in dataset HARMONIE Cy43 P3: We expect these changes to have little impact as they are duplicate parameters and are parameters high in the atmosphere in products made for surface level.

• Temperature (11) and wind (33 and 34) on level type 100 at 300 hPa
• Temperature (11) and wind (33 and 34) at level type 105 at 300 m

The KDP is continuously updated and new datasets and new versions of datasets have been published the past few months.

New datasets:

• KNMI'23 - Built environment climate years: Hourly meteorological input of KNMI'23 climate years required to meet building energy demand
• Operational completeness magnitude for the Netherlands: Operational completeness magnitude for the six seismic stations in the Netherlands
• Global Lightning Imager from GOES satellites:
  • 0.05 degrees gridded data
  • Aggregated flash events
• High-resolution maps: High-resolution gridded maps are statistically blended from observations from weather stations from multiple networks for the Netherlands.

New versions:

• EURADCLIM: 1-hour accumulations: The new version has improved removal of non-meteorological echoes, better coverage of rain gauges from 2013 to 2020, and the years 2021 and 2022 have been added.
• EURADCLIM: 24-hour accumulations: The new version has improved removal of non-meteorological echoes, better coverage of rain gauges from 2013 to 2020, and the years 2021 and 2022 have been added.